Most people tend to see my wife as a sweet, quiet, even shy and very creative artist, a saint, really, an animal lover and nature lover and gentle spirit. I suppose this is true in many ways, I have written that about her. She is certainly quite creative and very good to all animals.  But there is another side to my wife, she is, after all, part Sicilian, she has a fiery temper and feisty spirit rarely seen beyond the confines of our little farmhouse, where we have been holed up like Siberian refugees in the snow and cold for weeks now.

I suppose some conflict was inevitable, being cooped up day and night for many frigid days together, although that has it’s rewards also.

Last week, this came to a boil, and I have proof. We were outside, shoveling snow, and I was in trouble with my wife. I said something that angered her – I remember, I suggested she move her little (I call it the toilet bowl) car out of a big snowbank and into a clearer spot so it wouldn’t be stuck in the next historic storm that was on the way and due to arrive shortly.

I was trying to call our friend and neighbor Jack Macmillan to ask if he knew anybody who had seasoned firewood, but the call was interrupted (or so I thought.) Maria had taken my suggestion about moving the car as my telling her what to do, a capital offense in this relationship (worse than drinking or being a typical male lout – she and her dog do not like men much.) She was muttering, glowering, waving her hands at me. She knew where to put the car, she didn’t need anyone telling her….

I looked up from my shoveling, and I saw that she was yelling at me from inside the car, which was moving.  I couldn’t see her but I could see her face in the mirror, and I did notice the car was backing up towards me at a good speed, I think she was either cursing at me or waving at me to get out of the way, which I did. But she was heading right at me, and fast.

I then accused her of trying to run me over, which she didn’t actually deny to the degree I might have hoped for. And she had that black-eyed Sicilian look, a Joe Pesce kind of look, she was cursing and mumbling darkly, waving her arms. I could see it clearly in the mirror, the look means run and hide. I jumped out of the way and I suggested again that she was trying to run me over, or at least back into me. Her little car might have bumped me, but it probably could not have finished the job. I think I weigh more than it does.

She claimed I had been annoying her all day (it was early morning), telling her what to do. I remember she was telling me what to do.

By then, the black Sicilian cloud had lifted a bit, she was sweet and conciliatory and smiling again, talking about quilts and birds and the spirits in the forest. And she had actually moved the car as I suggested, although refusing to concede I was correct in suggesting it. I told several friends later that she had tried to run me over, and Maria was there, and she just laughed, oh-that-silly-man-and-the-stories he tells. They all laughed too. They don’t believe me, I thought.

This morning, our friend and neighbor Jack Macmillan called up, he wanted us to know that my phone had not been turned off, the call went through, he had answered it and listened to the whole argument, and the part with me shouting that Maria was trying to run me over. Evidence! Jack heard the whole battle on his cell phone, I told him to save it as evidence, to store it up in the Cloud, so that the next time she tried to run me over in her little toilet bowl of a car, there would be some proof of what it is like to be married to a hot-tempered Sicilian.

(I’m saving the Iphone photo of the tire tracks on my forehead.)

I have to admit that I am happy in my marriage, it is exciting, mostly very loving, and we are well suited to one another,  especially when she is not trying to run me over.  And the truth is,  we are both strange and can be excitable, although I would never try and run her over. I told Jack to save the recording, (we are lucky it didn’t end up on Twitter) one had to watch out for these Sicilian women, and he said he knows, he is married to Maria’s pal Kim, she is one of them.