This month, Secraterri wrote about waking up to lots of strange and different men, all of whom are her husband. I don�t wake up to lots of strange and different men but only because the man I wake up to almost always is Sleeping Philately. I try hard to keep it that way. Much as I love my husband, in the first moments when I awake, I have no use for any one who can carry on a conversation, let alone someone who may feel unloved if I don�t. Nevertheless, her point is well taken. Any woman who is married to a man is married to many men. If she�s really lucky (and I am), she likes most of those men.

Some of the men I met before I was married. One of the very first men I met was Man-with-a-cause. Man-with-a-cause has ideas passionately held and many causes, large and small. He�s a vegetarian (although, with older age, he�s reluctantly concluded that I�m not joining that cause even if I accommodate it.) He believes deeply in fairness, in justice, in doing the right thing, and returning library books on time so as not to deprive others of the opportunity for reading them. He loves political discussions but he doesn�t just talk the talk. He will walk about in rain and snow to distribute literature for candidates he believes in (including me.) He signs petitions. He puts up yard signs. He cares and he cares deeply.

I know I saw Sweetheart, the guy who could accept a woman sobbing on his doorstep for no reasons other than hormonal problems, invite her in, hand her a kleenex, hold her, and then tuck her into bed for a bit without asking silly questions she couldn�t answer. Sweetheart is far more romantic than I am and brings daisies for no reason at all. I�d think Sweetheart was the guy I married except that Sweetheart, knowing I do not know my own left from my own right let alone someone else�s left and right, would not have put both hands out when I was supposed to place the ring on the finger of his left hand.

But there are a few guys I did not really know until after the marriage. I had glimpses of Mr. Hobby. I knew about his love of trains, especially steam trains. Even before we were married, I had to warn him that the day the model train tracks ran over my sewing machine was the day he went back to being alone. A girl has to have limits. I knew about the Indian Head pennies so I suspected about the coin collecting. Some people receive change and put it in their pockets. Mr. Hobby examines the change for interesting pieces and dates and mint marks and such and trades coins with me.

But I didn�t know All Things Philatelic. I didn�t know about the stamps. I should have suspected I married a latent philatelist but I didn�t. I didn�t know that I�d have the pile of stamps I can use on mail and the ones I can only look at. I didn�t know I�d get elaborate directions on what stamps to use on self-addressed envelopes. I didn�t know I�d attend stamp shows. But I should have seen the signs. Oh, well, I would have married him anyway.

The Pied Piper of Children and Babies gave no hint of his existence at all. The guy I married loudly and frequently declared that he did not like children much and did not want to have any. He slowly evolved into the guy who was willing to have one if I really wanted it and then, with the advent of some (luckily solvable) fertility problems, into a guy who wanted a child. It was Kat�s arrival who called out to the Pied Piper and the Pied Piper has been around ever since. It is Pied Piper who heads the middle school stage crew for the musical and Pied Piper who sat at the kids� table for the Seder last night. Pied Piper has been an unexpected treat.

One of the unexpected parts of marriage is the parade of strange men who show up for dinner. After more than twenty years with Mr. Philately, seventeen of them in wedlock, I think I know most of them. But every once in a while, someone new shows up. Even in marriage, some days you have to play �Guess Who�s Coming to Dinner.�

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