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Friday, June 24, 2005

T's Top Ten

T has to leave for work at 3:30 in the morning, and will probably be gone all weekend. I'm going to see if I can stay up long enough to make him sugar-free pancakes for breakfast, and I've been wanting to do this kind of tribute post for quite a while, so, well, here it is.

Note: This list represents only a few high points, as I look at life with a man who is full of kind, wacky, clever, intelligent, generous ways, every day of his life. This doesn't even begin to display the magnitude of the joy I have, that he is in my life, that I didn't have to "settle" for a man to whom I wasn't terribly important, but was given one who takes my sometimes-overboard affection and returns it to me many-fold. I don't want to imply that these are more important than any of the thousands of everyday happinesses we have together and as a family. Also, um, the list had to be family-friendly, so, um, yeah. There's none of THAT in here; don't worry.

Without further ado, and in no particular order:

• My surgery and recovery. For three weeks he basically waited on me hand and foot. He brought me my meals on a tray. He helped me get up from my chair. He did the laundry and corralled the kids to get the kitchen cleaned each night -- all this with the most generous, loving attitude I could ever have imagined. There was not one false note, one frustrated sigh, one teeny hint that I should just get better already so he could have his life back.
• "Babe". When we'd been married about three years, Yosemite Valley flooded and T had to live in the Park so that he could get to work. He'd be up there for six days and then come home for one day. It was the first time we'd been really separated in our marriage, and it was a difficult time. However, one day T called me and told me about this movie they'd shown on the bus they rode in, down from their housing in Wawona to the valley floor, called "Babe". He told me I HAD to watch it, it had the cutest little pig in the WORLD in it, and I did, and he was right, and I just loved that this same man who could rebuild a transmission and exegete Phillippians and plan military strategy, that man whom people think of as so serious... fell in love with a talking pig with a good heart, and wasn't ashamed to admit it.
• The Nikon. Um, what more can I say on that one. He's always been great at gift-giving, even when we're broke and that means we're giving each other backrub coupons for Christmas, but he totally outdid himself with The Nikon.
• When we found out I was pregnant for the first time and he was so happy that he cried.
• "Ducky!" When we were engaged, we were out for a walk, and he looked at me and just said, "DUCK-y!" in, well, in this cute little cartoon voice he does. He avers that he has no idea why he said it (I think it was because of the annoying little flip in the back of my then-short hair, which looked like a duck's tail, but he says it wasn't that). And Ducky -- along with a parade of other duck-related nicknames -- has been what he's called me ever since. Now my nine-year-old son calls me "Quacky". I guess that's OK. ;)
• Snapple. When we were dating, I discovered peach Snapple and couldn't get enough of it. In 1993 in our small town, Snapple could be hard to come by, so he bought out our local grocery's entire stock of Peach Snapple (about a dozen bottles) and set them aside to give to me one at a time. I'd come out of the restaurant where I worked and there would be a Snapple in a bowl of ice on the seat of my car. Now I drink the diet version, and not as often, but the taste still takes me right back to that summer and fall.
• Florida. I have a very, very dear NOW PREGNANT WOO HOO SUSAN friend who lives in Florida. I'd wanted to visit her for YEARS, and in February 2004 T decided that to heck with it, we'd just make it happen, no more putting it off. So we went, and had a fantastic, amazing, wonderful time, and T was the first person to start planning our next trip.
• Phantom of the Opera. In the fall of 1994, our first year of marriage, he worked some overtime and used the money to buy tickets to the San Francisco production of Phantom of the Opera. We went on New Years' Eve. It was definitely a gift for me -- he went expecting to watch me have a good time and not much else. Which totally explains why he cried at the end and couldn't stop talking about the show for days, right?
• His broken ankle. He was off work for two and a half months, and we all enjoyed it so much, funny as it sounds to say it. We look back on that time with immense fondness. The stereotype about men is that they whine and act like babies when they're sick or injured, and the stereotype about wives is that we can't wait for our husbands to get out from underfoot so we can have our routine in place. We shatter both of these, I'm happy to say.
• The book signing. In the fall of 2001 An author I liked was going to a town about four hours away to give a talk and sign books. T took me to meet her, on a trip which involved our car's final death throes and the purchase of a used car. We were later getting to the city than we thought we'd be but no way would he give up and go home. He had bought me four of this woman's books for Christmas (which, you'll note, since it was fall, had not arrived yet); he smuggled them along in the car in the hope that he could somehow manage to get them signed without my seeing him do it. I ended up in the end of the signing line, which was moving slowly, and he was trying to amuse the kids and keep them in order, so I gave up on getting my book (the one I'd bought for myself that day) signed, and suggested we go. So T took me to ANOTHER event the next spring where the author would be, and we got all five of the books signed. Books which T wouldn't read if he was alone with them in a doctor's office with a three-hour wait. THAT is how much he loves me.

Comments

Posted by: Debbie at June 25, 2005 12:38 PM

Posted by: Michael at June 25, 2005 04:48 PM

Posted by: jenn at June 25, 2005 07:43 PM

Posted by: Maria at June 26, 2005 01:13 PM

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