A Very Patient Wife

I have a very patient wife. I know that she truly loves me despite some of the ways that I might get on her nerves at times, and last night was a very good example.

We had been watching TV together for two hours, taking in the latest episode of Downton Abbey, (see, I’m not ALL bad – how many guys out there watch Downton Abbey with their wives, without complaining, and actually enjoy it?) and then we watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, followed by The Colbert Report. We both enjoy ending a long hard day with lots of laughter.

By now it was late and we’d both had enough TV for the night. But just as I was about to turn the TV off, I switched from TiVo to live TV, and I saw her face… This woman’s face. I was transfixed… and instead of turning the TV off, I continued to watch her.

She is Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel of Saudi Arabia, and she is beautiful. She is also intelligent, articulate, and a publicly vocal advocate for womens rights in Saudi Arabia. You may know that in Saudi Arabia, women were only recently given the right to vote, and run as candidates in municipal elections just this past September, 2011. However, women in the Saudi Kingdom are still prohibited from driving, and they are legally subject to being accompanied by mandatory male chaperones for almost any public activity. So the womens rights movement in Saudi Arabia still has a long way to go…

But Saudi women have a powerful advocate in Princess Ameerah, who since she is a member of the Saudi Royal family, is able to speak out on their behalf with much less danger of serious repercussions.

Just letting you, my readers know, that I wasn’t just staring at her beautiful image on our TV last night, but that I was also actually listening to what she had to say, during her interview with Charlie Rose.

But then I was interrupted by my wife, who said “I thought that you were going to turn the TV off, Chris.”

“That was then…” I replied in a faraway voice. My wife looked at me as though she was on the edge of saying something cutting and sarcastic, but then paused, and instead she got up from the couch and came over to give me a genuinely affectionate kiss.

She smiled at me and said “I’ll leave you with your beautiful Arabian Princess now, because I’m tired and I’m going to bed. But try to learn something more about her, besides her measurements.”

“Will do!” I answered, smiling back at the wonderful and very patient woman that I love so much. (my wife – not the Saudi Princess)

Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel is a voice for positive change and social progress in a part of the world that really needs it. If you’d like to watch her interview with Charlie Rose, click on this link: Princess Ameerah and then click on the Princess to start the video.