Little White Lies, with Love

The Boston Globe 

Decades ago, when my husband was in Arizona with his work buddies, on a reward trip, a building-partnership trip, a "get out of Dodge it's winter here and perpetual summer there" trip, he called home the first night and announced, "It's raining."

"It's raining?" I said back. It hardly ever rains in Phoenix. Nearly 300 days of sun and only 20 days of any kind of precipitation, boasts the Chamber of Commerce.

"It's just a fluke. I'm sure the sun will be shining by tomorrow," my husband said confidently.

But the next day he called with the same sad story.

"The rain hasn't stopped," he said, sighing.

"I can't believe it. You must be so disappointed. No golf? No swimming? No outside anything? What are you going to do?"

"Just hang around."

I was not just hanging around. I was home, holding down the fort, putting out fires, mothering, daughtering, de-icing — nothing horrible, but there was no turn-down service or swimming in an indoor pool in my immediate future. Yes, it was raining in Phoenix, but Phoenix was still a better place to be.

By day three, however, I began to feel a little sorry for him.

"It isn't still raining, is it? It can't be."

"It's a monsoon. And there's not much to do here in the rain."

This was before the Internet, of course, maybe even before the Weather Channel. My husband said it was raining in Phoenix and that was that.

Day four. Day five. More phone calls. More of the same sad news.

When he came home on day six with a tan, he said he got it on his last day. "The clouds finally broke, and that sun? What a beautiful sight," he said. I was glad for him. I was happy! "At least you got in a few rounds of golf." He smiled. I smiled.

For more than 20 years, I had no clue that it hadn't rained a drop in Phoenix that week. That every day had been gloriously sunny and perfect. "I didn't want to make you feel bad," my husband said when he finally fessed up. "You were home. You had the kids. It was 10 degrees and you were shoveling every other time I called. The last thing you wanted to hear was that I was somewhere warm, soaking up the sun and having a good time."

Sometimes we lie to spare ourselves. Sometimes we lie to spare others. I like the sparing others lie.

"How was the party?" a friend asked me a while ago. She had so wanted to go to this party, had a new dress, killer shoes. "It wasn't great," I told her. "You wouldn't have had a good time. You wouldn't have liked the food and no one you knew was there. And there was no music." Lying, lying. So she'd feel better.

"Tell me about your day," my husband asked me when we were on vacation last year. We had signed up for an excursion, eight hours of seeing sights we'd been reading about. But he got sick and couldn't go. "You didn't miss much," I told him. "Two of the museums were closed, the guide's English was not great, there was a lot of walking, and lunch was mediocre." Lying, lying. So he'd feel better.

Sick as a dog, down for the count all last week, I missed a lot of things. Parties. Music. A fancy dinner. "You didn't miss that much," my friends said, lying, lying. And even though I knew they were lying, their words made me feel better.

In the middle of winter, in the middle of a flu season, in the middle of sick kids home from school and no more vacation days, "Somewhere warm, soaking up the sun and having a good time," texted and e-mailed and augmented with photos can feel a little dispiriting.

But "It's raining in Phoenix." Like a love song, this little lie woos.