The Tsk-Tsking of Others

It was that time after dinner when people race each other to wave off any suggestions of dessert.

Our group of fourteen had eaten well, hungry after a day chasing musk ox in the hills outside Nome, Alaska. Our van had gotten stuck in the mud and several of us had pushed it onto solid ground. We were a study group, we’d been together for many days by that point, knew each other’s sweet public foibles and the things that made us want to sit at opposite ends of the dinner table.

Everyone said no to dessert. We were on the tour company’s dime so there was incentive to order dessert, at least to my way of thinking. Why not? But I demurred nonetheless. Not my husband, though.

“I’ll have a banana split.”

I heard the tsk-tsking from the far end of the table almost immediately. Audible. Like my husband had ordered up a joint with his coffee.

We had a diverse group, as much as a bunch of sort of older people with enough money to go on a study tour of Nome, Alaska, could be. We had the German woman who lived on the East Coast who had worked for the National Institute of Health. She walked with two canes and always looked frail but she was hearty and went everywhere we did. And the chemist who sat across from us the first night of the trip and recounted how he’d met his wife, also a chemist, and changed his life plan the moment he saw her. She blushed. He was bent over from arthritis but insisted on pushing the van with us. He was not done yet, not done yet with anything.

We felt like teenagers in the group.

My husband coached the van driver out of the mud. While he shouted directions and gestured one way and then another, I stood to the side on a mound of tundra moss. I laughed, “Oh, Lord, now we’re in trouble.” The tsk’er standing next to me turned to me, “Does your husband know you talk about him that way?”

Oh my, I thought, the disapproval is falling out of your mouth in an avalanche of steel bolts. How have you held them crammed in your mouth all this time? How could you even speak with the bolts crowding your teeth, jamming your throat? How could you see the musk ox with the commotion in your mouth, holding all that in, your opinion?

“Yes. I make fun of him all the time.”

It felt good to say that. My husband is getting our van out of the mud and I am teasing him. Yes, I am. Because that is what I do. He is betting that is what I am doing. And when it comes time, I will go push the van out of the mud with him.

And share his banana split. Like it’s the best banana split ever in the history of the universe.