Kenji could handle never knowing what the temperature would be when he returned home from work. It honestly didn’t bother him if it was hovering around sixty-five degrees, even when it was that cool outside. He could always take a sweatshirt out of his closet and wear it until Ikuko finally turned the heat on again.

He didn’t dare mention the slight weight gain. Kenji was much smarter than that, and it really didn’t matter. His wife was still beautiful to him. And it wasn’t like he’d stayed the same size since college.

Kenji could also handle the irritability. If Ikuko snapped at him, he knew not the take it personally. There were a couple of instances where he did anyway, because it was hard not to. When someone tells you that you bought the wrong kind of milk, that she wanted goat’s milk and you bought the same skim milk you’ve been buying for thirty years, but she didn’t tell you anything, well… Okay, maybe he was still trying to learn to deal with an irritable wife.

The one thing Kenji knew he couldn’t handle was the tears. Some nights, when the two of them were next to each other in their bed, he soon heard the faint sound of Ikuko trying not to cry. During those nights, Kenji wrapped his arms around her and held her close, letting Ikuko cry into his chest. Those were the times when he felt helpless.

When there’s a problem, men want to fix it. However, this wasn’t exactly a problem. It was a fact of life, and there was no way of making it better. Kenji knew it was worse on Ikuko than it was on him… but still. He knew being there for her meant something, but it never felt like enough.