Once upon a time, the various roles of family members were well defined by social mores. My mom told me a bunch of times that I shouldn’t think of asking a girl to marry me until I had the ability to support her. A husband was supposed to be the bread winner. He was also supposed to be the “protector” of his wife and family.
Let’s focus on that protector role for a bit and examine a few examples in Marjorie and my beautiful, long marriage (60 years this month). In one of our homes we had a patio with a sliding door right next to our bedroom
The patio door was locked and we had our privacy. So here we are abed for the night when Marjorie heard a strange noise from our patio. She said something like “Oh Don, I think there’s someone outside on our patio. Please check it out”.
OK let’s see. I’m in my jammies with no weapon. Let’s slide open the patio door at 11pm and run out of a lighted room into a dark outside to intercept Jack the Ripper. I think not. My cowardice won the day. The noise stopped. The raccoon ran away. And we lived happily until the next crisis.

Since life is a sitcom, another crisis was bound to occur. This one was at Folly Beach with our whole family in the early eighties.
We were in the middle of our beach week, and as usual, we were having some rain. Thunderstorms, actually, with lotsa wind. My lovely wife was with me near the kitchen window. She noticed a loose screw and a leak from the window. I’m not a good fixer, but this seemed like an easy fix. The ONLY problem was you had to get out on the roof to access the screw and stop the rain from coming in. Did I mention it was raining? So—- I, in my bathing suit, climbed out onto the roof to tighten the screw to keep the ocean out. Somehow the window closed and latched when I got out on the wet roof. Did I mention it was pouring, thundering and lightning was visible? I yelled for milady to unlatch the window so I could escape my imitation of a Lightning rod.
She started to open the window and saw it was still leaking. My wife, lover, partner, and soul mate pointed to the loose screw and indicated she’d let me in when i finished my “screw” job.
I promptly screwed the guilty screw and she finally opened the window to let me in outta the pouring rain, lightning, and thunder. Mission accomplished. Yay.

One last brush with death occurred on my lunch hour at Scott AFB. I usually came home for lunch since I worked and lived on base.
As I entered the house, I saw and heard lots of activity near the pantry closet.
Marjorie says “Don, there’s a bird in the closet. So—- I dutifully, rushed into the closet to find and catch the predator eagle, vulture, osprey, or hawk.
My lovely wife closed the closet behind me and trapped me in the same closet with a predator bird.
Turns out it was a cute little scared sparrow who had lost its way and wound up in our kitchen closet. I managed to catch it in a large towel. Only then did Marjorie let me out of the closet and watched me gently set the giant monster free. Another chance for the family “protector” to save the day. Enuf.