September 7th is Feel the Love Day. It also happens to be my husband’s birthday.
Naturally Wayne’s important to me and a birthday is prime time for making him feel loved. But this year I’m actually under the gun to show the love. Last year I didn’t do very good when it came to his birthday. He definitely wasn’t feeling the love.
I don’t exactly remember why I was less than stellar last year when it came to celebrating Wayne’s birthday, but I remember I was. And what made it worse was Wayne has the worst luck when it comes to birthdays. People are always forgetting it.
Jobs he’s had where birthdays were celebrated? His was always overlooked. (Funnily enough, the oversight was almost always caught the next week and cake was brought in and he was taken out to lunch, but over the years it’s become a joke between us. “Yep, they forgot it again.”)
Even his own family is hardly ever on time with cards. And my family isn’t all that great about sending them on time either, to me or him.
So last year when I let him down…wow. I’ve always been the one person he could rely on to be on time, make a big deal of it, and who spoiled him rotten.
I think it had to do with the fact that he was working crazy long hours, not just around his birthday, but for the whole year before. I hadn’t been around him enough to know what he wanted. (Well, I knew one thing he wanted, time off, but I wasn’t in the position to grant him that wish.)
The horrendous work hours is sort of why I’m in the boat I’m in this year. He quit that job and found a new one back in Florida. The trouble is, he’s there, I’m here until the house sells, so… I’m in a new pickle this year.
He is flying in tonight, and the house will be properly festooned with banners, balloons and streamers. His dinner request was grilled fish and brownies with nuts for dessert. I’ve already been to Fresh Market and back, where I got him salmon and shrimp to make shrimp cocktail, bread, and salad fixings, after I stopped at the Hallmark store next door to buy cards from me and the kids. (Yep, he’ll even be feeling the love from our pets.)
However, when I came home I found a nice surprise: a Birthday Bandit had sabotaged our mail box with balloons.
I cracked up. I knew right away who’d done it: our friends and neighbors who live right across the street.
I called to say thank you and she had yet another surprise: she was in the process of baking brownies, knowing that’s Wayne’s favorite, to bring over. When she did, she had wrapped them up in beautiful tissue paper.
Even though it’s Wayne’s birthday, her gesture made me feel the love, too. It might not be as elaborate a birthday as I’d originally envisioned for his big 4-0, but I have a feeling it’s going to turn out to be one filled with love.