The Wife Not Thanked : If only those really involved got mentioned, maybe the Oscar speeches wouldn’t run into Tuesday.

Every year, when the Academy Awards come on, my husband and I play a little game. This is intended to be the last move in that game.

As the winners stand at the podium, grasp their prize and make their acceptance speeches, a certain number of them say, “and I’d like to thank my wife, without whom this wouldn’t have been possible.” At that cue, I nudge my husband and he winces. Even without my explicit reproach, the implicit hangs in the air like a noose: the memory of him standing at that podium, accepting his award and not thanking me. I guess the topic came up that very year. Someone pointed out that he did not thank me. That was the beginning of slow mortification that has continued for 18 years. I took the role that fell my way and began needling, not because I believed that he had done anything wrong, but just because he was so “teasable.”

But it has gone far enough. He has turned on the spit for long enough. It is time for me to announce that I never did blame him for not mentioning me. In fact, I don’t think he should have mentioned me. It was his hands that crafted the work that won the award. It was he and George Lucas who huddled over the Kem editing “Star Wars,” laboring over it long into the evening, worrying over every cut, while I sat on the sofa, knitting, pregnant, lost in dreams of the baby.

When I hear other Oscar-winning men mention their wives, I wonder how on earth their wives are responsible for their getting an award. I suppose it was their sacrifice, staying home alone, being single mothers, giving up a life of their own so that the husband could be the star. It is the wife’s nonachievement that is being thanked as being responsible for the husband’s achievement. She kept the home fires burning so that there was soup in the kettle when he came home at 1 a.m., when the family was sleeping. She got breakfast for the kids in the morning and got them off to school while he was still sleeping. She listened to the kids after school, took them to the doctor while he was out of town. Her award is for the continuance of life, not only in the family, but also on the planet. Of course, they don’t give out Oscars for things like that. Those kinds of things are too mundane, too ongoing, too universal.

I have accepted that I will not have an Oscar. What I do not accept is that my sacrifice is for my husband, that I make possible his excellence. I am realist enough to know that he would have excelled with or without me. Had there not been soup in the pot (and often there wasn’t), he would have gotten it himself. Even the growing up of the children I accept as something that would have happened with or without me. I accept my anonymity, my melting into the pot of women. Women are the soil of growth, and soil is without borders. No particular patch of soil is to be singled out for an award.

Women wonder whether to call themselves by their father’s name or by their husband’s name. I say it is all the same. The father and husband both are men. I have my own name, and I carry the other, which ties me to my husband.

I have my own work, and it is vastly different from his work, as are our rewards. We don’t operate in the same realm. His are days of going to the office, dealing with bosses, producing a product. Mine are days of sitting by the sandbox, watching curly-haired Eric draw lines in the sand with sticks. I write poems about him. Mine is a life without a boss, without a schedule, without a product, without a salary. But I have ties, blood ties and earth ties. I sit with my friend Patti, knitting and whiling away the hours. Eric crawls toward Patti’s daughter Lillian, and I take the scissors away from him just in time.

I do not begrudge my husband his award, nor do I partake in it. It is part of his life, which he earned alone, without my help. I do not ask for his thanks. My achievement is not his life. My achievement is my life.