Happy Birthday, Husband, etc.
Tue., January 6, 12:07 PM
It’s Husband’s seventy-sixth – and he knows it! (We offered him trombones…) And last night he said, “I know what I want for my birthday.”
I had told him that I was getting a new coffee maker because I didn’t like the Gevalia one. Turns out he likes it, but the new one will arrive any day now. (Janice, thank you again!) It took him a couple of days to think it out, but he knows: he wants the Gevalia. I don’t have room for two coffee makers; I barely have room for one if that one is the Gevalia, which takes up more room than the Braun for the same ten cups. He says he will make room. I have to let him try. Just so he doesn’t decide he wants it in the bedroom, where he would surely start a fire.
He’s been feeling pretty chipper the last few days, but you know why I go home at lunchtime. First of all, I want to make sure he’s still breathing; you have to wonder about a man who sleeps at least eighteen hours in twenty-four. And secondly, I have to make sure he hasn’t burned the house down.
I have to say that the year has not begun auspiciously. Or at least, this week certainly didn’t. U.D.’s car (the replacement for the Geezermobile that got totaled in October) needs body work, and the insurer approved a shop two towns over. She could not leave the car at the garage before Monday; they did her a favor allowing her to bring it over before 9 a.m. So yesterday morning we prepared to bring in the car; I had to follow her so that she could get back to go to work on time. It might be exasperating, but it wasn’t impossible.
Until JM decided to phone just before we were to leave – and kept talking for fifteen minutes. There goes the time buffer; we might still make it, but it was dark and rainy and we didn’t have time to spare… In theory, at least, we shouldn’t blame JM for the fact that we had to wait for the drawbridge, which stopped traffic just as we got to it. (In other words, had we started when we intended, we would have made it.) And we got to the right place and couldn’t find anyone, or any open doors, until U.D. got on her cell phone and called and someone actually came out of the darkened office. (Ya gotta wonder what he was doing in there; maybe he was in an inner room.)
Amazingly enough, we got to U.D.’s office with a minute to spare, but we were both more stressed than we realized. I dropped her off and went home to get the curlers out of my hair. I sat down and my back seized up. I wasn’t sure I would ever get up again. Nevertheless, the pain passed and I got ready to go to work myself.
There were no cars in our lot when I got there. Shoot! If Otherlawyer hasn’t been in yet, I will have to open the deadbolt (y’know, the one where my key got stuck last summer) and shut off the alarm. I hate that! Well, the key didn’t stick and I didn’t set anything off, so the cops didn’t come. Naturally, Otherlawyer’s phone started ringing the minute I walked in, but I couldn’t do any more than take a message.
Half an hour later, Bosslawyer shows up. (He’s early.) And he’s got news. It seems that Otherlawyer wasn’t feeling well last week and went to the E.R. – where they admitted him and performed heart bypass surgery! He will be fine – his wife was just here and said he’s coming home today – but what a way to begin the year.
That’s the second emergency bypass I’ve heard about recently. How things have changed! It’s thirty-three years since my dad needed surgery – which they didn’t even do at Yale at that time. Mother had to take him to Houston, where he was in the hospital for weeks.
On the news this morning, Tug McGraw died. You youngsters may recognize only that he’s Tim’s father, but he was a competent baseball pitcher for a lot of years, first with the Mets (when I was still a fan) and later with the Phillies. Reporters have concentrated on his pitching or maybe on his personality – “you’ve gotta believe!” But I know something else about him.
The woman who told me the story was a little kid at the time, visiting the Mets training camp in Florida with her family. She approached one of the stars to ask him for an autograph, and he responded with “don’t bother me, kid.” Terribly hurt, she was standing there crying when Tug McGraw came by, dried her tears, soothed her feelings, and gave her his autograph. She never forgot him.
And let me repeat, Happy Birthday, Husband!
