T A B L E++T A L K

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A L S O++T O D A Y

M is for the many ways she lost it ...
The mother of all drama queens

R E C E N T L Y

Drowning in fairness
By Liz Gardner
Does holding back valid criticism create more confident children or praise junkies?
(05/19/98)

Where the gals are
By Laura Miller
From Ally McBeal to Bridget Jones: Neurotic pals for lonely gals
(05/18/98)

Young, black and too white
By Karen Grigsby Bates
Social clubs for black children are making a comeback among middle-class parents who fear their kids are losing their roots
(05/15/98)

Death comes for the bishop
By Sallie Tisdale
Does the murder of a leading Guatemalan human rights activist no longer qualify as news in the United States?
(05/14/98)

Raging hormones
By Polly Shulman
Honest, respectful books that tell kids what they really want to know about sex
(05/13/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHER'S WHO THINKARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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[ T I M E__F O R__1__ T H I N G ]
U x o r i o u s
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Wives of the world --
you've never heard of this word,
and there's a reason why.

BY KATE MOSES | During a recent rainstorm, immobilized at the edge of a futon by a furiously napping toddler, a poorly ventilated dryer chugging endlessly in the background, I came across the word "uxorious" in James Salter's memoir, "Burning the Days."

We were staying in a log cabin -- my husband, the aforementioned toddler, our 9-year-old and I. Outside in the rain were a few dozen century-old apple trees, all leafed out and ready, at the first rumor of spring sun, to burst their tight, lipstick-colored buds and turn the whole orchard into a pink snowstorm of blossoms. It was Mother's Day and a few days after my virtually uncelebrated wedding anniversary; a couple of weeks had passed since my birthday, which had also pretty much sunk beneath the surface without a trace. There'd been too much rain, too many colds and work deadlines, too little free time in the last few weeks and months. Finally, we decided to take the kids to the country for a weekend of decompression and belated, if modest, celebrations.

At various points during the ill-fated planning of the trip we'd congratulated ourselves on the fortunate seasonal timing of our country weekend. But El Niño canceled our anticipated picnic under the blooming apple trees and it was so cold we had to borrow firewood from neighbors up the road to keep from freezing in the middle of the day. It was then I came upon "uxorious," on the afternoon of Mother's Day, while in the near distance the 9-year-old was battling heroically in a fort fashioned of sleeping bags and his father was snoring delicately from a couch under the misting windows.

The toddler, too, slept on, as I pondered the local and etymological mysteries of "uxorious." Salter had been a fighter pilot in the Korean War, stationed earlier, among other places, in Hawaii -- where he met and fell hopelessly in love with his best friend's wife, Paula. His friend, Salter explains, was a decent, good-natured guy, though prosaic and no match for his extraordinary wife. It was his friend that Salter refers to as "completely uxorious," so much so that he overlooks the love affair brewing between Salter and his wife.

uxorious: (Latin uxoriosus, from uxor wife) greatly or excessively fond of one's wife, doting (The New Short Oxford English Dictionary)

uxorious: dotingly or irrationally fond of or submissive to one's wife (Webster's New World College Dictionary, Third Edition)

Uxorious is a word I can hardly believe anyone possessed the far-flung imagination to make up. It comes at first glance as a disorienting shock, an unthinkable stroke of good luck -- like Ed McMahon showing up at your screen door with a big cardboard check. On second thought, though, its existence is a little troubling -- especially when you consider what being "excessively fond of one's wife" might mean. Isn't excessive fondness what all wives might reasonably expect?

Was James Salter's friend irrationally fond of his wife? According to Salter, it appears not. "Irrational" implies that the wife upon whom such fondness is bestowed is somehow not worthy of the emotion, and it was precisely because Paula and Salter were both trusted and trustworthy, Salter explains, that they never consummated their love. Also, Salter betrays just the slightest poetic license in his usage of the word "uxorious" to describe his friend. The sentence from "Burning the Days" reads: "He was completely uxorious -- his marriage was his life just as his uniform was, his golf shoes, his good name." Isn't Salter really saying that it was the sanctified institution of marriage that his friend truly revered, rather than the living, breathing Paula? In which case, is uxorious even the right word?

Maybe the truly uxorious member of this triangle -- if we can, for emotional clarity's sake, suspend the legalisms of state-sanctioned marriage -- was Salter, who returned from his first flight in a fighter plane convinced that "I would die in a crash, I knew, without ever having made love to her. There is that certainty of a woman who was made for you just as Eve was for Adam." In a subtle gesture that Salter later sees as the "lasting, sure" way to make her mark on him, Paula eventually steers Salter to the woman he would marry -- someone who could never compete with her.

N E X T+P A G E: Uxory in "The English Patient"