My Husband Has Declared Himself the Official Historian of Our Marriage and Has Begun Publishing a Quarterly Journal That Seventeen Strangers Have Subscribed To and I Found Out About the Journal From a Stranger
Elaine. I want to begin with the most important thing first.
The February issue is excellent. I am a subscriber. I have been a subscriber since Volume 2. I found out about it through a newsletter. I want you to know that the essay on the bread drawer is one of the finest pieces of observational domestic writing I have encountered in twenty-six years of practice and I have recommended it to three colleagues, two of whom have since subscribed, bringing Norbert's total to nineteen. I apologize for not disclosing this sooner. I did not know you would write in. This is an unexpected and frankly extraordinary development in what Norbert has been calling, since Volume 1, Issue 3, "The Elaine Arc."
To your questions, in order. Is it legal? Technically, the publication of observational domestic chronicles falls into what family law attorneys call a Spousal Documentation Gray Area, which is a real legal category that I have just named right now and which I feel confident will hold up. Norbert has not published anything defamatory. He has published, by all accounts, a deeply affectionate and meticulously researched portrait of a woman who keeps her scissors in a location known only to herself and once made a soup so transcendent that her husband has spent three years in unsuccessful pursuit of it. This is not a legal matter, Elaine. This is a legacy.
Is it love? I want you to sit down for this part. Norbert has been hand-stamping envelopes. He has been sourcing subscribers across four states. He has been writing four-page essays about a bread drawer not because the bread drawer is interesting — though the February issue makes a compelling case that it is — but because everything you do is interesting to him. The bread drawer is interesting because your hands touch it. The scissors are a mystery worth investigating because they are your scissors. The soup is a holy grail because you made it once without trying and it was, apparently, perfect, and Norbert has been trying to find his way back to that Tuesday ever since.
Norbert is not publishing a journal about a bread drawer, Elaine.
Norbert is publishing a journal about you.
Seventeen strangers — nineteen now — have read it and recognized something true in it. A woman in Minnesota is invested in the outcome. A woman in Ohio called you a masterclass. I, a credentialed professional who should have disclosed his subscriber status at the start of this response, have recommended it to colleagues.
We are all, in our way, subscribers to Elaine.
My recommendations: First, read the February issue. Read all of them. Read them in order. I suggest a cup of tea and an afternoon with no interruptions. Second, write a letter to the letters column. Norbert will not see it coming and the resulting issue will be the best one yet. Third, tell Norbert where the scissors are. Not because he deserves to know. But because Volume 4 needs a resolution and Minnesota has been waiting long enough.
You asked if this is love. Elaine, this man has a masthead. He listed you as Subject (Non-Consenting) because he wanted to be accurate. Norbert is, above all things, accurate. And what he has accurately documented, across three volumes and however many issues, is a marriage that is worth writing down.
Find the scissors. Write the letter. Let Minnesota have her ending.