With Valentine’s Day coming in just over 100 hours I want to tell you about my wife of 50.5 years. Not everything, just the thing I think you would want to know.
Mary is a very practical woman. And, has always been very conservative with money. Because of this we have had a wonderful, although many doctor’s wives might say austere, life. We now have a similar and comfortable, retirement life style. Thanks, Mary.
I learned many years ago, that Mary does not like flowers. She tolerates them if I send some to her, but she usually follows the thank you with I wish you would have put the money towards an extra mortgage payment. Flowers in the garden, she notices but keep them out of the house, they’ll just die and make more work for her.
Adjusting to no flowers in the house or in the budget has been easy, gift shopping has not. Three years ago we moved to house which did not have a central vacuum system, a luxury she had enjoyed for more than 40 years. Wishing to go easy on the retirement income she found an upright sweeper and an companion hand-carried “little” vac for doing the hard floors and the dusting. Within a month she hated them both. They have no power she complained. I agreed, even after admitting I don’t help with the weekly cleaning very often, but often enough to think the two light-weight machines were light weight in more ways than one!
So a central vac was on the top of her Christmas list two years ago. But after much discussion she and I agreed that it would not fit our last year’s budget. So guess what she got for Christmas 2011 and Valentine’s Day 2012! You got it! A Bean Central Vac. It was installed yesterday. She “enjoyed” using it this morning and is still singing its praise! You should have seem her smile today as she told the “food-sampler man” at Publix about her new central vac. It’s one of her finest presents ever! If you do not have a central vac both she and I wish one for you!
Now I know some of you think I am a non-caring, non-romantic, tight-wad husband, but you are wrong. There is no present that would have pleased her more. And to make yesterday even better, she enjoyed the workman who came to install it. She was especially fond of the younger one. They both worked quietly and fast and cleaned-up as they went. Both commented on how nice her kitchen looked, and were careful to show her how to use her new toy. She had such a good time that she asked me to tip them before they left. (She’s always been generous.)
When the boss returned she told him about the fine employees he had. He agreed and told us how the younger man was only recently back from Iraq where he was a Marine sniper. Which is the point of this post. He was such a quiet, polite, pleasant man that neither of us could think of him as a sniper. Yet this dedicated marine did what he needed to do to protect strangers in a foreign land and ultimately protect us.
I think I have talked many times about our wonderful military men and women, and I will continue to do so. These Americans make the world a better place for everyone, and always at a cost to themselves. Thank them each and every time you meet them. May God bless them and you!
The moral of the rest of the story is you might like strawberries, but fish like worms. So if you go fishing take worms for the fish and strawberries for you. Don’t take flowers for Mary.