I have been going through the leavings of the past year, tossing the useless and itemizing the rest. No, I am not working on our taxes—although there is something taxing about becoming 61 years old. Yes, it’s my birthday, and three days prior it was The Brit’s and my ninth wedding anniversary. Cue the music!
My birthday used to include cake and ice cream. Now I’m carb conscious and lactose intolerant. Just as well, since my Briteen grandson told me that the fire marshal nixed the permit for lighting my birthday candles. “We’re in a drought, and it’s a fire hazard,” he yukked.
Recently, I struggled to fetch a sun hat from a high shelf in the closet and called my husband, who knew just what to do. Send the grandson to see what I wanted. Grandson gently nudged me aside, easily plucked the hat down, and set it on my head saying, “It’s official. I can now reach things that you can’t!” That boy is such a treasure. Maybe I’ll bury him.
He is growing and my mother is shrinking. I know, she told me. “I’m 5-foot-1,” she bemoaned. “I’ve lost 2 inches!” Well, that’s just careless!
I’ve heard that you can tell how you’ll age by looking at your parents. Mom is a wonder. The woman gave birth to me when she was barely 5 months old! At least, that’s what she’d like people to believe. She still looks young enough to be my little sister (now that she’s shorter than me), a testament to the preserving qualities of margaritas!
I am becoming more like Mom all the time. We look alike, we talk alike, we laugh and even walk alike. Hey, that’s catchy—sounds like the words to the theme song from a 1960s sitcom! When it comes to husbands, we even think alike.
The Brit and I just celebrated our ninth anniversary. According to tradition, this makes it our pottery anniversary. That’s just perfect since we have both gone to pot, and I don’t mean the smoking kind!
Maybe it should be the potty anniversary because God knows, as we’ve gotten older, we have both had to race with the devil when driving home. It doesn’t help that The Brit downs numerous cups of tea each day. Thank God we have two bathrooms.
I even have my own GPS settings on the car for the best places to take a pause for the cause. I know where every bathroom in town is located and quite a few out of town!
I now wake up in the middle of the night every night. That’s because The Brit wakes up and has to use the loo. This wakes me, and when you wake me, you wake up my bladder. Now I have to run across the house to the other bathroom because the Englishman likes to take his time.
One thing I have learned about from Mom is how to manage a husband. I recall how she handled my late stepdad, Clarence. The man was a hard-working cowboy kind of guy who came to the dinner table for a quiet meal. We had company coming, and Mom asked him to put on a clean shirt.
“This one’s fine,” he said. “It’s clean—I put it on just this morning.” He refused to budge and Mom, always practical, finally shrugged and said, “Fine. I’ll just throw a sheet over you.”
I was reminded of this early one morning when I was roused from my slumber by shouts in the living room. I rushed out (after a frantic pee, of course) to find one-and-a-half men sitting on the sofa wearing Arsenal Football Club jerseys, one in tracksuit pants, and the one-half in his boxers, yelling at an English soccer game on television. At 5:30 in the morning. On a Saturday. I did what my mother would do. I headed straight for the linen closet.
After nine years of marriage, I have discovered something about husbands. Sometimes you can’t live with them, but you can’t kill them. Only a few days ago I drove The Brit to the optometrist. He began swatting the air with his hat, which has a metal buckle on the back.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“There’s a gnat in the car and I’m trying to swat it.” He then began hitting the passenger window and that buckle clacked loudly against the glass.
“Are you mad?” I shouted. “You’re going to crack the glass! Open the window and let it fly out, for God’s sake!”
“Oh! Dear!” came the sarcastic reply. The English excel at this—it’s that accent. He continued to taunt me: “Dear me, there’s a huge crack! Just look at it!”
“I am looking at it, and it’s about to walk home!” I retorted. We Italians aren’t half-bad at sarcasm, either.
I have come to realize that marriage is like playing cards. When you first start out, you hold in your hand diamonds and hearts. Then, after several years of constant togetherness, you sometimes wish you had a club and a spade!
Recently, on the way home from picking up our Briteen from school, we drove past several young college students, all Cal Poly athletes, who were running and jogging in groups. God bless the Mustangs! No apologies were necessary from either of us as we both gazed and reminisced.
Just because you’re on a diet doesn’t mean you don’t look in the refrigerator! After all, we both were just as young once and just as gorgeous. We may not be so young, but we’re still just as gorgeous! Happy pottery anniversary to you, my lovely, potty husband!
Ariel Waterman likes yellow cake with chocolate frosting! Send her a birthday cake, pottery, and a deck of cards via her editor, Ryan Miller, at rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 2-9, 2015.