Summary: THE MENTERVIEWS: #6 of 6 Kam is a soon-to-be police commander living a happily married life in Maryland with his college sweetheart and wife of twenty-one years. They’ve got two teenage sons, and even though he’s seen the absolute worst in human relationships during his long career, Kam is careful about policing the lines between expectations, compromise, and commitment in his own relationship. ♥ The average individual gets his ideas about relationships from his parents, but I would have to say that probably one third of my ideas about relationships came from watching my mother interact with my stepfather. My biological parents were separated when I was about five, so it was a long time — probably until I was eleven or twelve — before I saw her interact with another man. My stepfather, he was there, but I don’t recall seeing them interact all that much. My mother worked a lot during the day and my stepfather worked nights, so I didn’t see them much together until I was older. I don’t know that they interacted like typical couples in love would interact. Although, I’m certain that my stepfather really loved my mother and vice versa; they just didn’t have a real huggy kind of relationship. It was more pedestrian — getting things done, making sure we had what we needed, doing what needed doing around the house and that type of thing. It wasn’t what you’d call a great model for seeing how people should treat each other in a relationship. It wasn’t until I started watching television that I began to understand how things should go. Believe it or not, lots of my ideas came from modern day TV. Shows such as Happy Days – I’m almost embarrassed to say it – but, you know, I was watching couples interacting. Then I’m watching the Cosby show, seeing how the Huxtables interacted and how they went through life. From my perspective, only fifty percent of what I saw on TV was even possible in a real relationship. Let me explain this: it showed how a husband should treat a wife, how parents should treat their kids, like that, but when you watch those shows, you never really see the background of how daily life gets done. The cooking, cleaning, planning and problem solving, you never really see how that works out. Come to think about it, I never really saw that with my parents either. So when I got married, none of it was what I expected. Some things seemed to be missing when we got together. There were these gaps between my expectations and the reality, you know, and I’m still trying to fill them in in some instances. In others, I guess they’ll never be filled in. It’s a constant work in progress — trying to interact with my kids, trying to interact with my wife, talking things through, and figuring it out. Because of our misconceptions about relationships and how they should be carried out, I’m constantly trying to work through and find a resolve, but ultimately, some of those things will never be resolved. I’ll give you an example: when I first married my wife, it was a long time in coming for me to figure out the ways in which she was so different from me. I realized it was because of how we were raised. Despite our having spent so much time together before getting married, it wasn’t until we got into the house with each other that I saw the difference, which was this: my mother worked Monday through Thursday from 6:30 in the evening to 3:30 in the afternoon, so she was always there in the afternoons when I got home. She’d tell me, You need to do this, this, and this, period. And every Saturday morning before I could watch cartoons, my mother had a list of things for me to do beforehand. My wife’s story is very different. My wife’s mother worked in the evenings from 3:30 in the afternoon until 1 o’clock at night, which meant she was never home. So, for a large portion of her life, my wife’s sister essentially raised her. Their mom would usually be sleeping during the day. Of course, when we got together,
