It’s Sandy’s birthday today.
It’s a Tuesday and we both had work today and will again tomorrow and, we just came off a few days without power or screens. We’re getting over the tech withdrawal symptoms. So we won’t be letting the dogs out tonight, as the saying goes. Plus, we nod off by nine anymore.
But we are sautéing two beautiful pieces of Alaskan Coho with a shallot, caper and wine pan sauce. I tossed a simple salad of romaine, cherry tomato, red onion, and parmesan and made rice, and poured a shy Sauvignon Blanc. Sandy has carte blanche to indulge as many scary films as she can. I regard these as nervous system terrorism, so I’ll avert ears and eyes. There should be a film rating for horror pictures for people like me called AFIB. But Sandy regards them as comic salve.
Saturday we will “put on the Ritz” and have a proper dinner out prepared by experts who have a Wine Spectator award of excellence cellar, that begins with oysters Rockefeller and ends with vintage porto. I’ll wear a button shirt.
In September we will have been married 25 years, Sandy and me. It’s not such a long time compared to many marriages, but damn, it has been wide. Often overflowing its banks, flooding the village.
I could pull your leg and say it has been a run-on sentence of poetic Irish sentimental bullshit, all blissful mornings of coffee and smooches, always thoughtful discourse, toothpaste caps and toilet seats in place, birthdays remembered, no jokes or questions before ten, and endless song. Lots of song. But you would smell it.
But I would trade nothing. Our life together has been perfectly as it has been, ecstatic at times, comic often, tragic like clockwork. And it’s ours. I love it.
Perhaps the key was we were friends first. We know each other so well, and, we’ve not a clue who this stranger is frying tortillas on the griddle and singing Redemption Song, or watching movies about people trapped in a cave.
So, my best friend, happy birthday. I love you. Of course it’s been a long, strange trip, so I’ll leave that to those guys. But that is a rear-facing view, isn’t it? Let’s look forward. No, let’s look around, where we are, here and now. The power is back on. You have scary movies. I have hoops and politics. And the sun moves from over there to just there, imperceptibly, every day. Summer is coming.
Happy birthday.
Now, let’s eat. The salmon is ready.
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