Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Best. Wife. EVER.


Late in April last year, shortly after we moved to North Carolina, we got a phone call from Peter & Susan - my brother- & sister-in-law in London. While talking to them, it hit me that their 2nd wedding anniversary had passed just a few days before.
Me: "By the way, happy 2nd anniversary! Sorry I didn't sent you anything."
Susan: "Oh, don't worry about it. Nobody remembers your 2nd wedding anniversary, anyway."

I thought it was interesting that there was absolutely no sense of sadness or disappointment in Susan's voice when she said that. But now I understand. On Monday Tim and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary and we made no big deal about it. No cards. No expensive gifts. Indeed, I gave him a jar of his favorite peanuts & he gave me some gummy dinosaurs. Junk food. That's what we gave to one another on our 2nd wedding anniversary. And we loved it.

Note that this is quite different than our elopiversary which takes place in February. On April 2nd two years ago, we stood in front of our families and exchanged vows & took lots of photos and ate some fantastic cake. Of the two anniversaries, it's the day that means the most to me. When my mother thinks back on that day, I think her eyes well up with tears. That's probably why she remembered to send some flowers.

But despite the fact that this anniversary is supposed to mean more to us than to anyone else on the planet, we've been very lazy in celebrating it properly. Last year we packed up our apartment on our anniversary. But at least we had a plan. This year we didn't even have that. I figured we would just stay at home, make a little dinner, & watch a David Attenborough nature show.

Well, things didn't go quite as planned. Late in the afternoon on the day of our anniversary, I got a phone call. My cell phone said that the call was from Tim.
Me: "Hello!"
Mystery voice: "This isn't who you think it is."
It was our friend, Mark. Mark works with Tim. Mark called to say that .. well, I'll spare you the details. Basically, the team's boss was going to take the team out for dinner to celebrate the completion of a project. When did he want to take them out? That very night. The night of our anniversary.

An ordinary wife would have said no. No way in hell. An ordinary wife would have said that her husband better come home & enjoy his freakin' wedding anniversary with his charming, gorgeous, & wonderful partner. An ordinary wife would have been enraged that her husband would even consider asking this ... and probably even more pissed off because he made his friend do the dirty work for him.

But not this wife.
The fact is I felt miserably sick Monday. Aunt Flow had kicked in the front door of my uterus that morning & was making herself comfortable (and making me rather uncomfortable). I'd managed to take care of the taxes that day & even went to the grocery store, but I was on my last legs and I soooooo did not want to cook dinner. I just wanted to lay on the couch and be alone for a few more hours with my precious, precious bottle of ibuprophen. To me, the idea that somebody out there wanted to feed my husband for free sounded like the best anniversary gift I could receive.

So yes, I let my husband go out with the guys on our anniversary. While he was gone, I baked us a cake. And Tim decided to bow out a little early from the celebrations & got home by 9pm. So we still got to curl up on the couch together & eat cake while watching a David Attenborough DVD.

It was just what I wanted.

1 comment:

lizgwiz said...

Awww...happy belated 2nd anniversary. I hate Aunt Flo. She's a bitch. Though I've discovered that, for me, Aleve kicks her in the ass even better than ibuprofen. Take that, Flo!