Hope - Anne Freeman

My sister-in-law believes in hope. I suppose I would too, if I had her life. Every argument she and her husband have ends up with one threatened the other for a divorce. Mr. Passive Fuddy-Duddy yells at her that he is going to have full custody of the kids because she’s always working and never home to care for them anyway, and that she’s going to end up paying him tons of child and spousal support. I have to stifle a grin when she tells me this because it does show that the wheels do turn in that seemingly vacuous brain of his. All of her arguments about what a loser he is, that he can’t get a job, or when he has one he can barely hold on to it because he’s so lazy, fly out the window, because it’s true – she’s not around for the boys, and frankly, she prefers to work that to be a mom. She only married this guy because she was getting older, and no one else was asking her out on a date, let alone contemplating marrying her. She doubted whether she wanted to have children, so she stopped thinking about it, closed her eyes one night soon after they got married, and lay down. Less than a year later she was a mom, and for the first month she thought about posting an ad on Craig’s List for someone to come take her child away.

If I were Lori, I suppose I would believe in hope, too. Hope that my husband will change, hope that I will one day enjoy being a mother. As she sits on the couch at night reading romance novels, and eating ice cream while her husband is out playing poker and smoking Cuban cigars, she hopes that things will be different one day.


When Obama came out with the “Got Hope?” campaign, she rushed to get one of those bumper stickers for her car, and slapped it on. She waxed effusively one night, enthralled by the romance of Obama and his “Got Hope” campaign. I supported Obama, too, but not this “Got Hope” crap. I couldn’t resist. “Got Hope is crap,” I said to Lori. “Hope is for people in who don’t like their lives, or don’t like something, but aren’t willing to do anything about it differently. It’s passive living, it’s not real.” I looked right at her as I spoke.