The Curmudgeon's Conversion

The Curmudgeon’s Conversion

by Ellen Fannon

“Walter, I can’t live with your negativity any longer.” Missy stood with her arms crossed, her lips pressed into a thin line. “You’ve always been a grouch, but you’ve gotten worse as you’ve gotten older.”

           “What are you talking about?” Walter grumbled. His wife’s carping interrupted his irritation with his favorite sports team losing again. He shook out the newspaper and pulled it up in front of his face to block out the view of Missy’s disapproving glare.

           She snatched the paper away. “You’re always complaining. If it’s not the weather, it’s the lawn maintenance man. Or having to wait thirty seconds for the waitress to refill your coffee. Or the grandkids making too much noise.”

           “Give me back that paper. I was reading it.” Walter grabbed for the newspaper that Missy held just out of reach.

           “No. Please listen to me. Your cynicism is dragging me down. You don’t have a nice word to say about anything or anyone.”

           Walter scowled. Why couldn’t the woman leave him alone? “That’s because your nagging would make a saint cuss.”

           Missy blew out an exasperated breath. “Walter, I need to get away from your pessimism. I’m going to visit my sister for a while.”

           He barked out a scornful laugh. “Edith? That old bat? She could drive a monk to drink.”

           His wife narrowed her eyes. “When I get back, if things haven’t changed, I’m leaving you.”

           Her announcement both angered and pleased him. How dare the woman walk out on him—a prize of a husband? But how nice it would be to have the house all to himself without her constant badgering. Good riddance to her.

           “Fine.” He rose from the table and stomped into the kitchen.

           Missy followed, slapping a thin, leather-bound book on the counter. “Here. Rather than dwell on everything that displeases you, I want you to start thinking of things you’re grateful for and writing them down. Come up with at least three things a day. Surely, you can find something to be thankful for.”

           “What? Are you out of your mind?”

           “No, I’m serious. Focusing on things we’re grateful for changes our mindset. It also decreases stress and anxiety and positively affects our physical health, such as decreased blood pressure.”

           What had come over his wife? She must have been reading some of those psycho-babble magazine articles again. Or watching that quack, Dr. Phil. He harumphed. “The only thing stressing me and raising my blood pressure is you.”

           “I’m going now, Walter,” she said through clenched teeth. “Think about what I’ve said.”

           He shook his head as Missy walked out of the room. A few seconds later, the sound of the front door closing told him she had, indeed, left. Good. Although he breathed a sigh of relief, a strange thudding of his heart contradicted his thoughts.

           Walter went into the living room, sank into his favorite Lazy Boy, and reached for the television remote. He channel-surfed for several minutes, becoming more annoyed with the lack of anything interesting to watch.

           “You’d think with a hundred channels, there’d be something decent on TV,” he muttered. He finally settled on a baseball game, although his team wasn’t playing, so he didn’t care much about who won.

           Resting his head against the chair, he closed his eyes, thinking about how peaceful it was without Missy. Maybe he should have remained a bachelor. Being taken in by Missy’s big blue eyes and allowing himself to be manipulated to the altar had started his downward spiral. Then he’d been stuck in a lousy job for forty years just to put food on the table for his unappreciative spouse and three screaming kids. He’d never had a moment’s respite since he said, “I do.” One would have thought he could at least enjoy his retirement, but being around the house all day with his shrew of a wife had made his golden years intolerable.

           Walter realized he was thirsty and started to call for Missy to bring him a soda. Then he remembered she was gone. Grousing, he pushed down the footrest of his recliner—what was the problem with this stupid contraption that didn’t want to go down— and hoisted himself to his feet. He shuffled to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, rummaging through the contents. What? No root beer? Blast the woman for not having gone to the store before walking out. She knew he loved his root beer. Now, what was he supposed to do?

           His gaze swept around the kitchen, landing on the journal. A cynical laugh erupted from deep in his chest. A gratitude journal? Okay, he would play along with Missy’s ridiculous game. He picked up the book and opened it to the first blank page. Reaching for a pencil, he meticulously wrote the date at the top of the page and the number “one” below.

           “I’m grateful Missy is not here to nag me,” he wrote.

           Number two: “I’m grateful that her hatchet-faced sister is willing to take her in.”

           He chuckled at his own cleverness. Number three: “I’m grateful I’ll have the whole bed to myself tonight and won’t have to listen to Missy snoring.”

           There. He’d done it. He’d found three things to be grateful for—root beer not being one of them. Grabbing a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator, he returned to the living room and popped the top. Foam spurted out, running down his hand. Walter slurped up the mess, then wiped his hand on his pants. It figured, the way his day was going.

           Walter spent a quiet day at home, relishing the freedom he had. Until dinner. He finally found some leftover spaghetti in a Tupperware bowl and heated it in the microwave, nuking it to chewy consistency. But he was hungry, so he ate it anyway. 

           At bedtime, he stretched out across the entire span of the bed and gave a satisfied sigh. Ah, the whole bed to himself. But he had trouble falling asleep. When, at last, he managed to drift off, his dreams revolved around writing in the ludicrous journal.

An overly cheerful little bird singing his heart out woke him the next morning, and Walter tried to block out the maddening sound by placing the pillow over his head.

           “Blasted bird,” he grumbled, finally giving up and getting out of bed.

No coffee. Of course not, because his selfish wife wasn’t here. Did he know how to make coffee? Scratching his head, he reached for the coffee can and looked for the instructions. Confound it, why did they have to make the print so small? Where were his glasses? He almost called out to Missy, asking where his glasses were, but caught himself.

Forget it. He would go out for breakfast. Before returning to the house, he stopped by the store and bought himself a six-pack of root beer. Had it always been this expensive? He put the drinks in the refrigerator, his eyes landing on the journal again. His lips curled up in a sneer.

“Okay, let’s get this over with.” He turned to the next page and wrote the date.

Number one: “I’m grateful the service at the Coffee Shop wasn’t as bad as usual.”

Number two: “I’m grateful the new kid at the convenience store moved faster than their usual clerks, who could be declared legally dead.”

Number three: “I’m grateful Missy’s not here, so I don’t have to listen to her yakking on the phone.”

Now, what was he supposed to do for the rest of the day? He wandered around the house, frowning at his pile of clothes on the floor from the night before. Generally, Missy picked them up. Muttering under his breath, he gathered them and carried them into the laundry room. He sure hoped Missy would be back before he ran out of clean clothes. How was he supposed to know how to operate the washer and dryer? That was Missy’s job.

The hours passed in agonizing slowness, the ticking of the clock sounding overly loud in the silent house. He rambled aimlessly from room to room until he gave up and plopped into his Lazy Boy again, attempting to fill the emptiness with noise from the television. As the day wore on, he felt Missy’s absence more strongly, and her abandonment rankled all the more. Unable to find anything appetizing for dinner, he once more ventured out. The quietness of the empty house greeted him upon returning home, and he wondered, for the first time, if the stillness he had so vehemently coveted was as wonderful as he’d thought it would be. Cross with himself for such nonsensical thinking, he tried to embrace the solitude by sitting with a book, telling himself he could read in peace without constant interruptions. But his mind wouldn’t focus on the words before him.

He finally fell into bed that night, exhausted from doing nothing all day.

The following morning, he determined to make coffee. Proud of himself for figuring out how to work the coffee maker, he decided to write his accomplishment in his gratitude journal.

Number one: “I’m grateful I didn’t need Missy to make my coffee. I figured it out all by myself.” Don’t need her for coffee. Don’t need her for anything.

While the coffee brewed, Walter stepped outside to fetch the paper. That gave him another gratitude idea.

Walking back into the house, he wrote down the number two and next to it, “I’m grateful the paper wasn’t late today, and the paper carrier didn’t throw it into the bushes this time.”

He perused the sports section while the coffee finished. Aha! His team won!

Number three: “I’m grateful the Cubs finally won a game.”

Walter carried his coffee to the table and sipped it leisurely while reading the paper. He smiled over the Cubs’ victory and opened his mouth to share the monumental event with his wife. Then his smile slipped from his face. She wasn’t here to share the news with. Maybe he should call his son. Although Mark wasn’t as enthusiastic about sports as his father, he still had a Y chromosome. He would understand. Now, where did Walter leave his phone? No use asking Missy.

He finally located it in the living room and tapped Mark’s number. Annoyance swept over him when he reached his son’s voicemail. Walter refused to leave a message. He hated voicemail. Drat. Now what?

Maybe a walk. Missy was constantly bugging him to get out and get some exercise. Walter dressed and started down the street. When he passed his neighbor’s house, he saw the man working in his yard.

“Hey, Bill,” Walter called. “How about that Cubs’ win?”

Bill looked up, his face somewhat confused, and Walter realized he’d probably not spoken two words to Bill all the time they’d lived next door to each other.

“Uh, yeah, that was great,” said Bill, still eyeing Walter as though an alien had taken over his body.

“Well, see you,” said Walter, hurrying on his way.

Mark phoned later that afternoon. “I saw you tried to call, Dad. What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing much. I just wanted to tell you about the Cubs game.”

“Oh. That’s all?” Mark sounded slightly annoyed.

“Yeah, it wasn’t important.” Walter hung up.

The days passed in lonely monotony. Walter dutifully wrote in his gratitude journal, but he found the tone of his writing changing. One morning, feeling particularly alone, he wrote the number one, followed by, “I am grateful for my wife. I never appreciated how much she meant to me until she was gone.”

To his surprise, tears stung his eyes. What in the world? He was a tough old curmudgeon, not some touchy-feely wimp. Still, Missy’s absence felt like a part of his heart had been ripped out, leaving a gaping hole.

He stared at the journal, filled with snippets of his thoughts over the past several days. Number two: “I’m grateful for our children, whose successful upbringing is mostly due to Missy.”

Number three: “I’m grateful for our lovely home, the essence of which has been largely due to Missy’s efforts.”

Suddenly, Walter’s brain overflowed with ideas faster than he could write them down. He couldn’t stop. As more and more thoughts sprang to mind, his pencil flew over the pages until he reached the end of the book. The heaviness in his heart lifted, and he felt more alive than he could ever remember feeling. He had to share his joy with someone.

Missy. He hadn’t talked to her since she’d walked out that door. But would she answer his phone call? No, he had to see her in person. Grabbing his keys and the journal, he hustled out to his car to make the two-hour drive to Edith’s house. Barely able to contain his excitement, he found himself singing, horribly off-key, to the radio.

He pulled up in Edith’s drive and bounced to her front porch. As he poised his finger to ring her doorbell, she yanked open the door, her arms folded across her chest, a murderous look on her face.

“What do you wan—”

Before the words left her mouth, Walter crushed her in a bear hug. “Edith, how are you?”

His sister-in-law shrugged off his embrace and stood glaring at him. “Are you nuts?”

“Walter?” His wife appeared from somewhere beyond Edith, who still blocked the entryway. “What are you doing here?”

Walter skirted around Edith and attempted to wrap his arms around Missy as he had done her sister, but Missy took a step back.

“I finished the journal,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Missy asked. Edith hadn’t moved from her position, standing like a sentry, although Walter had already breached her security.

“Well, I haven’t finished it, exactly,” said Walter. “I ran out of pages. You were right, darling, I—”

“Darling?” Missy’s eyes widened. “You haven’t called me that since we were dating.”

Walter ran a hand through his thinning hair. Why hadn’t he bestowed a term of endearment on the woman who had been his whole world, although he had been too self-centered to realize it?

“Look, Missy, I know I’ve been in a bad mood for the past . . . forty years or so.”

Behind him, he heard Edith snort.

“And I’m sorry.” He took a step forward and grasped her hand. She didn’t pull away. “So sorry. You were right. About everything. My whole perspective changed once I started looking for things to be grateful for.”

His wife stared at him as though he had sprouted horns.

“Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“Is this just a ploy to get me to come home so everything can go back to the way it was before? Because if it is—”

“No, I promise. I’m a changed man.” His eyes searched hers.

Missy raised her eyebrows. “After being a grouch for forty years? Forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical.”

“Leopards don’t change their spots,” Edith chimed in.

Walter held his tongue. Even his prickly sister-in-law would not get to him today.

“I understand your reluctance. But I want you to know I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make a fresh start.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

Missy snatched her hand away. “I don’t know, Walter. I’m going to have to think about it.”

“Of course. I love you. I’ve not said that nearly enough over the years.”

She huffed out a mirthless laugh. “That’s for sure.”

He handed her the journal. “Here, read this,” he said. Then he gave her a sheepish grin. “Well, I tore the first few pages out. It took me a while to get the hang of this gratitude thing.”

Missy nodded. “I will.”

He glanced between his wife and Edith, who looked like she’d sucked on a lemon. “I’ll go now.” Edith slammed the door behind him.

Walter drove home more at peace than he’d ever been. Missy would come back to him. He knew her nature—sweet, forgiving, and committed to her family. It might take a little time, but he planned to spend the next forty years—well, perhaps that goal was a little ambitious— making up for his lifetime as a curmudgeon.

Over the next few days, Walter continued his new writing routine in the gratitude journal, finding it increasingly natural to focus on the positive aspects of his life. He called his children, reconnecting with them in ways he hadn't for years. He even struck up a friendship with Bill next door.

One sunny afternoon, he sat on the porch listening to the cheerful songs of birds that he had found annoying not so long ago. A familiar car came up the street, and his heart skittered as it pulled into the driveway. He bolted off the porch and hurried to meet his wife.

Missy stepped out of the car. “I read it,” she said.

Walter held his breath as he searched her face. “And?”

Missy smiled, and it struck Walter how beautiful she was. When had he stopped noticing? “I can see you’ve changed. But rebuilding our relationship will take time.”

Walter nodded, swallowing against the lump in his throat. “I know, but I’m ready to make a fresh start if you are. I love you, Missy.”

She stepped closer and took his hand. “I love you too, Walter. Let's take it one day at a time.”

As they walked into the house, Walter felt a sense of peace and purpose that had eluded him for decades. The curmudgeon he had been was slowly fading, replaced by a man who had discovered the profound power of gratitude and love. And for that, he was deeply thankful.

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