Tomorrow is my husband’s birthday! The boys are giving him a box of golf balls and I am giving him two golf shirts. I’m also baking a chocolate layer cake. This is exactly the same gift and cake combination as last year, and quite possibly the year before that. I can see myself many years in the future, wearing my old-lady slacks and fancy beaded sweater, my support hose and my bright pink feathery lipstick, presenting my husband with two golf shirts, a box of golf balls, and a chocolate layer cake.
Sometimes I think of us when we are old and in a lot of ways, things will not be much different. I will still want to eat dinner at 4:45 and go to bed at 9. My husband, in the tradition of old men everywhere, already swears at the local meteorologist. “That Schulz is a (something something) idiot. Just give me the (something something) forecast already, and stop with the (something something) jokes.”
Speaking of forecasts, I saw an older couple in a garden center who showed me a glimpse of my future. The lady had an armful of boxed bulbs, which the man was eying suspiciously. “I don’t know where you think you’re going to plant them”, he said. “But they’re so pretty!” she replied. “Do you think I’m going to dig up more lawn?” he asked somewhat grumpily. The lady – and although she was a complete stranger, I admire her greatly – smiled sweetly and did the old-lady equivalent of eyelash batting. He sighed. “All right. All right. Just get them. I guess we’ll make room.”
If you substituted perennials for bulbs, and “I’m going to dig” with “you’re going to dig”, you would have the exact conversation my husband and I have every spring! And possibly the exact conversation we will have for the next forty springs! One of these days he’s going to come home and wonder where the lawn went.
All of which is to say I’m looking forward to celebrating many more birthdays with my wonderful husband. Happy birthday, sweetheart!
Scott is always happy when I make another flower bed–less lawn to mow.
🙂