Blue-white wisps curled upward from the lit end of a tight roll of tobacco that was hooked under my index finger. I took a lazy puff and rolled the spicy smoke around on my tongue before blowing it outward into an evenly spreading cloud that wafted about on the warm breeze. Then, with a lazy stretch, I rested my forearm across my knee and contemplated the slowly growing ash on the end of the cigar.

It had been more than six months since my last cigarette, so my wife, Felicity, was none too excited when I decided to revive my old habit of cigar smoking. As I am not one to do things halfway, these weren’t the greenish, dried out logs you pick up at the local stop’n’grab. Not at all. My humidor was filled with rich, Maduro-wrapped symbols of masculinity available only from a good tobacco shop. Inevitably, with such quality there comes a price, and said price served simply to provide Felicity with yet another reason to harbor disdain for the habit.

Of course, with any marriage-well, good ones anyway-there is a generous amount of compromise. The “compromise” that had been reached in ours was something on the order of a matter-of-fact statement from my headstrong wife of, “If you’re going to smoke those things anyway, you’re going to do it outside!” After eight years with this auburn-haired, second generation Irish-American dynamo on a five-foot-four frame, I had learned to cut my losses and run; for as much as she hated to admit it, Felicity fit neatly into the stereotype of the tempestuous, Irish redhead. Though her singsong accent was normally faint-unless she was tired, angry, or had been in close proximity to her relatives, whereupon it became very pronounced-her stubbornness and temper were with her 24/7.