Week 108: Avocados, Highlighters and a Spreadsheet
By: Aaron Charles
Tags: Cooking, Short Story, Fantasy Baseball, Avocado, Marriage

My wife is incredible. Hopefully you’ve been able to figure that out by now, but if you haven’t, let me be clear…

My wife is INCREDIBLE!

Not only did she make multiple recipes using one of my favorite food items (avocados) during this particular weekend, but she also continued what has become a yearly tradition for us.

The Respite is Over

It’s become a running joke in our marriage that Sarah only has about a month’s time where there’s no discussion of fantasy sports. That may be stretching it a bit, but the fantasty baseball and fantasy football seasons do merge together to take up a big chunk of the calendar. From prepping for drafts to managing teams, fantasy sports can be a bit of a time investment. Invariably, I end up discussing my virtual management decisions with Sarah. She’s a good sport about it. But there’s one night every year where she takes an active role in it. It’s on this night that her “respite” from fantasy sports officially ends. But she always takes it in stride. In fact, she does far more than that, and she’s a saint for it.

It’s the night of my fantasy baseball draft, and Sarah is always my drafting partner.

During the month of February, I’ll prep my fantasy baseball spreadsheet and guard it with my life. Over the last two years, I’ve enlisted the help of my Excel-mastermind father (David Charles) to help with the spreadsheet. The goal is always to get to the point where I have a sheet of paper with the names of the players in the best ranking order I can find from online sources. That sheet I then give to my wife, and she crosses off and highlights players as the live draft continues.

Just so you don’t think the header image above is me being incredibly self-centered, here’s Sarah’s Facebook post from that night.

Laying the Groundwork

What happened that evening was surely a sign of what a great teammate my wife is. Does she care about fantasy baseball? No, not really. But she knows it’s important to me, and so she treats the draft as if it’s the most important thing she’s doing that night. It means a great deal to me, and I want the whole world to know it.

The thing is, Sarah lays the groundwork for that attitude of teamwork every single day of our marriage. Take earlier in that very same Sunday, for instance. She made avocado toast for us. Then later, we used the leftover avocados and made guacamole together.

Day in and day out, it’s a matter of taking seemingly small things and acknowledging that they’re important. Cooking, smiling and even highlighting the name of a baseball player on a piece of paper — none of it may seem important. But if it’s important to one of us, the other picks it up too.

Are we perfect at it? No, of course not. But it’s something we try to resolve anew in our marriage each and every day. Support each other. Listen to each other. Make what the other person labels important be important for you.

I got to the end of that day looking across the table at my dear wife. We had just finished the draft, and at the other end of the table sat a bowl of chips and some tasty guacamole. We smiled at each other, and in a moment of clarity I thanked my wife for putting up with over an hour of baseball stats and player names.

But what I was really thanking her for was her partnership. And that isn’t something that’s unique to any one day or evening. That is something that Sarah lives out every single moment of our lives. And that is something for which mere words cannot adequately express my thanks.

And so — as I vowed on a Saturday in September — Sarah gets my life. All of me. Not because she helped me with a fantasy baseball draft. Obviously it goes far deeper than just that. But I think it’s a good example of the kind of person she is. She’s loving. She’s caring. She’s incredible. She’s my wife. She’s Sarah.

For all that and more, I will be forever grateful.