The Perfect Valentine's Gift

My husband and I have been married for forty-seven years.  I had to do the mental math to figure out that number because it's hard to believe I've lived that long with the same person. I won't say it's always been easy or a bed of roses, but we've worked at it and refused to give up on it when times got tough. And there have been some serious rough patches. We've worked out compromises, learned to live with each other's flaws, and continue to love each other despite differences of opinion on lots of issues.

Thinking back over the years, the way we've celebrated Valentine's Day is a reflection of the progression of our marriage.

The first few years, when we were childless, he was in grad school, and I was working, we would generally go out for a nice dinner at some upscale place. The kind where you had to make Valentine's Day reservations three months in advance.

Then kids came along. I stopped working for a while to raise them (and also to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life - but that's a difference post for a different time), he had a bottom-rung job, and we were too poor to do anything but exchange cards - sometimes with a bit of chocolate or a bottle of inexpensive wine attached.

The kids grew up, went off to college, our job situations improved, and the cards got fancier, the chocolate more elaborate, and often were accompanied by flowers or some other nice gift. We even went back to the nice dinners out.

Now my husband is retired and I've cut back work to part-time. He has discovered a love for cooking and prefers to create his own special meals for us, so we don't go out as much.

A few years ago he came up with the perfect Valentine's Day gift for me.

Diamonds.

Baseball diamonds, to be exact.

One of the things that has united us for all these years is that we're both sports fans. We met while we were both undergraduates at Duke and many of our early dates involved sporting events there. I have some great memories of those times. (And one not-so-great memory, but that's a post for another time.) We've continued to enjoy a shared love for Duke sports, pro football (WhooHoo, Patriots!), college basketball, and baseball.

We've managed to get to a few major league games in Atlanta and Washington, which are both within driving distance, though it's a pretty long drive. But that's expensive and time-consuming and the seats aren't always great.

More often we go to minor league games right here in our home town. The city built a classy new baseball stadium a few years ago that is easy to get to, charges very reasonable prices for seats, and has lots of food and drink options. Our team is a class-A affiliate of the Miami Marlins and a lot of their top talent has passed through here on the way to the majors. We've seen Marcel Ozuna, Christian Yelich, J.T. Realmuto and the late Jose Fernandez play. Giancarlo Stanton still holds the record for the longest home run ever hit out of our park, one of the 39 home runs he hit during his one season with our team. Being minor league match-ups they aren't always the prettiest games, but they're always fun.

So now my hubby gives me baseball diamonds for Valentine's Day, usually in the form of a package of tickets for various games during the season.  As the cliché goes, it's a gift that keeps on giving. I love it!  And I love him for thinking to do it.

The Five Dollar Happily Ever After

by Gina Ardito

I was a five dollar bet. He was trying too hard.

The year I turned twenty-two, a friend of mine forgot my birthday. Because I was (and still am) a bit of a smarta**, I told him he could make it up to me by showing up at a local club that Friday night, buying me several drinks, and dancing the night away. This particular friend is not much of a dancer so I knew there was a very good chance he wouldn't show up. Bearing that in mind, I brought another friend, Margaret, to the club with me that Friday night.

Margaret was the dance fiend among friends. She hit the dance floor that night and never returned. Since I was the designated driver of the evening, I took a seat at the bar (another friend was the bartender--always helpful!) and ordered up a club soda. The first guy to approach me showed up with a posse of his friends backing him up. He proceeded to tell me his dad was a driving instructor and he could get me free lessons if I'd date him. (Wow! What a deal! What a catch!) Luckily, my bartender pal scared him and his posse away. 

I was sipping my club soda, scanning the dance floor for Margaret, when a husky voice whispered in my ear, "You're not having a good time tonight, are you?"

I turned and came face-to-face with a pair of golden eyes that made my heart stutter. He offered to buy me a drink. I told him I was drinking club soda, which was free. He offered to buy me a free club soda. Okay, I thought, we've got great eyes and a sense of humor. Two checkmarks for him. I must have smiled, encouraging him. He pulled up the barstool next to mine and kept chatting. He told me he was a stockbroker and part-time ski instructor. He had a boat he'd love to take me out on. He routinely flew to Europe on business. The more he told me, the more I knew he was lying. And yet, as odd as it might seem, his lies charmed me. He was trying so hard to impress me, I felt flattered. Or maybe he had me hypnotized with those eyes. 

We talked for hours. We danced. And at the end of the night, despite his insistence I leave with him, I gave him my phone number and went home with Margaret. She, of course, gushed about this guy who seemed so interested in me. "When you marry him," she said, "I better be invited to the wedding." I told her, "When I marry him, you get to be in the bridal party."

You can pretty much guess the rest. He called me. On our first date, he confessed he wasn't a stockbroker or a ski instructor. He didn't have a boat and had no plans to go to Europe. In fact, he'd only recently graduated college and was about to start his first "real job" a few weeks later. Why had he lied? Because I looked so perfect, so special, he thought he wasn't good enough. Yeah, I fell. Hard and fast. Lucky for me, so did he. We dated for two years and on the second anniversary of the day we met, we married.

Over time, he taught me to ski. He took me sailing. And we traveled to Europe. So maybe he was more prognosticator than prevaricator. 

The five dollar bet? I found out about that after we were engaged. His friend, Mike, who was with him at the club the night we met, revealed all. "Didn't he tell you? He spotted you when you came in that night, said you were perfect for him, and bet me five bucks he'd leave the club with you."

He lost that bet.

But, in the end, we both won. Mike was the best man at our wedding; Margaret was a bridesmaid. It's been thirty+ years since that night in the club. His eyes still make my heart stutter. And every time he tells me, "I love you," I fall in love all over again.

Happy belated Valentine's Day! 

I Am Not A Leg-Rubbing Hussy!

This month's topic, “how you met your spouse” would make for some pretty dry reading. I met him through his brother, with whom I worked. It was game night. A box of Trivial Pursuits. What can I say? It was the late 80s.

Instead, I wanted to tell you about the first “date”, which wasn’t so much a date as an arranged (by me) group purchase of tickets to Les Miserables, some tactical maneuvering (by me) to make sure I was sitting beside my future husband, followed by the twenty-three-year maligning of my character, (by him).

In recounting the story of our first not-quite-date-with-a-group-of-people-who-all-happened-to-purchase-a-block-of-tickets-to-Les-Mis, the love of my life maintains that I, “kept rubbing my leg against his” through the whole performance, making it impossible for him to be unaware of my blatant interest in him.

I protest!!! First, let me just say, I never, ever, EVER made the first move. But if I did decide to go outside my comfort zone and be the leg-rubbing-hussy that I’ve been accused of being, I would have been more creative than that. Sheesh! I write fiction, for cryin'-out-loud!

Just as an “off-the-top-of-my-head” scenario, it would have gone something like this: After jockeying for the ticketed seat beside his, I would have done something clever, like drop my program, waited for him to bend to pick it up, then gone down a fraction of a second later and head butted him into unconsciousness. Then it would simply have been a matter of dragging all six-foot-five-inches of him down a couple of flights of stairs, (no elevator in that theater), propping him up in a shadowy alcove while I drove the car around from the parking garage, and shoving his unconscious bulk into the backseat. Voila.

Or what if I had let that other woman in our group have that ticketed seat beside his, and I just marched down the aisle with an “excuse me. Pardon me. Excuse me,” checked my ticket, and told her, “there seems to be some sort of mistake here. I believe you have inadvertently received the ticket beside my future husband. Sorry. We’ll have to trade seats.”

(Rubbed my leg against his through the whole show. Pffft.)

A couple of years ago, we gave my daughter tickets to see Wicked. It was in the same theater where my husband and I saw Les Miserables so many years ago. I got to be the parent who got the other ticket and drove our pre-licensed teenaged daughter to see the show while my husband stayed at home with the too-squirmy-to-sit-through-the-show younger sibling. It was fabulous! It was “WICKED”. It was… cramped! 

During intermission, everyone stood, if not to race to the line forming at the restroom, then at least to stretch. There was a lovely gentleman seated beside me – his family fanned out down the aisle on his opposite side. As we all stood, stretching, he shook out his leg, and flexed his toes, cursing a cramp in his calf. He turned to me and said, “I am so sorry. The seats in this theater are so cramped. I promise you, I’m not intentionally brushing your leg with mine.” He was about the same height and breadth as my husband.

I should have had him write it in a note. Then I’d have written proof that I am not a leg-rubbing hussy!

Epilogue: The next day (after the first not-quite-a-date-with-a-group-of-people-from-work), my husband called me at work to invite me out for lunch. It was lovely, giddy, and ended when he walked me back to my office and left me with a hug and a promise to get-together again soon. ;) The rest is twenty-three years of history.