When my wife, Gaywynn, points out a specific and real defect in my behavior, I will often say to her,

“I’m a work in progress.”

Yes. I am.

When you live with me, you encounter a road with many “Men Working” signs. One lane is closed. There’s someone standing along the side, looking at their phone, holding up a slightly off-center “SLOW” sign. There are several unoccupied earth-moving machines in the road’s median. Two or three workers lackadaisically poke at something in the closed part of the road.

I’ve been working on myself, with the aid of at least ten therapists (I counted them) through years, since, oh, 1964. That’s a long time to have much of me under construction.

Will this work on myself ever get done? When some part of me appears repaired, another part seems to reveal itself in dire need of attention. You encounter a pothole in my personality that makes being with me extremely bumpy.

I don’t know how much longer I can extend this analogy or metaphor or whatever it is. It’s getting a bit tedious and unwieldy. The point is the work is never done. I keep trying. I work and work, but sometimes I think I’m getting nowhere.

My wife Gaywynn hasn’t given up, though. She still puts on her hard hat every day, trying to help me understand my fears and suspicions, my shortcomings that can sometimes cause her and us pain. She often works harder than I do, and that makes me ashamed. It’s not fair that she does more work on me than I do, and so I redouble my efforts.

Thank God, I married a good woman. Without her, the sign would simply read, “Road Closed.”