My husband and I are fairly equal partners in this challenge of everyday life. We both clean, care for the children and house, and divide-and-conquer as necessary. We have a mutual respect that is helpful (until we have differing ideas, of course). The point is there aren’t many tasks that I would be surprised to see him doing, nor vice versa.

For dinner last night, we sat down at one of our old (though not great–this was more for nostalgic purposes) haunts and proceeded to review the menu. As I made my decisions first, I started looking at the wines. Our waitress, a young, French woman, came and took our order and we thought nothing of it.

When she returned, however, she held a bottle of wine and was clearly full of angst. She uncorked the wine and began moving it towards my husband. I wasn’t understanding at all until she blurted out (in French), “Well, Madame ordered the wine, but is she also going to taste it?” I suddenly understood that it was probably not normal for a woman to order the wine. I said I would try it and she breathed a sigh of relief. She turned to my husband with a nod of approval and said “very progressive!”

I was fairly amused– as was he. After living here all these years, neither of us had ever noticed that it mattered who ordered/tasted the wine. Is it another “rule of having fun?” Since then, I have asked several waiters if women ever order wine and they have said that it has happened– proving that, while it is not necessarily a surprise, it is also not common. I don’t know if the wine was really so great that night, or if it was simply a bit of feminism I was tasting. Either way, the results brought a smile to my lips.