8:30 PM Kids f-i-n-a-l-l-y go to sleep.
8:50 PM “What time does the mall close?” asks husband
9:00 PM Husband suspiciously says “I’m going to work out!” and leaves the house in a hurry.
10:30 PM He is still not back from the gym. Where can he be? 1.5 hour before my birthday, he can only be at 2 places- Target, or the grocery store. Gosh, I hope he’s not browsing at the local gas station…
Rewind 8 years. We’ve been married for 4 whole months, and we were celebrating my birthday together for the first time as a married couple. We pulled up to a small fondue restaurant in Los Gatos. My husband had a silly grin on his face, and was tickling from head to toe with excitement. He parked the car, took my hand and said “I have something special for your birthday.”
I have to take a moment to explain that I LOVE being surprised. I also LOVE getting gifts. So his words “…something special…” floated in my head, and I was dizzy with excitement.
He reached over to the back seat, grabbed a mysterious, wrinkled, and used brown bag. A brown bag! Ok, so gift wrapping is not his thing. I took the brown bag, and opened it with anticipation. I reached in, and grabbed a…
...Bathing suit!
It wasn’t just a bathing suit, it was actually MY old black bathing suit. Puzzled, I reached in again to see what else was in the bag-
... Palm Pilot!
It was not a new Palm Pilot, but my old Palm Pilot. Then came out of the bag my favorite pen, old wallet, sunglasses, and a hair brush.
I sat there speechless. Was this some sort of a scavenger hunt? Where was my real birthday present?
“Happy Birthday!” My husband said proudly. I was totally dumbfounded. I looked at all the stuff out of the brown bag, looking for a clue, a sign, anything! And that’s when I realized, all the things I took out of the brown bag were things I had misplaced, and couldn’t find around the house- It was a BAG of My Missing Stuff!
4 months turned into over 8 year of marriage. One year, I got an omelet maker. Another year, I got a homemade “coupon” for a massage, which I have yet to cash in. Then the kids came, and celebrating my birthday became a ritual for the kids. My husband even bought a Thomas the Tank Engine cake for my birthday one year. Sometimes I would find the birthday card unwritten, sitting on top of the washer for months. Every year, it became less and less important, and my expectation grew smaller and smaller.
So when he came back from his trip to “work-out”, I was not at all anticipating, excited, or hoping for a gift. I was too exhausted and sleepy to care, so I went to sleep.
When I got up this morning, my husband was busy at the kitchen trying to make pancakes for me. Turns out he was out till wee hours of the night doing grocery shopping to prepare for my birthday breakfast. He made a dozen pancakes, stacked them together, and put candles at the top. As I sat there listening to my husband and the kids singing the Happy Birthday tune, I realized something. There were no presents, nor surprises, but I was still content. Why?
I didn’t have to cook breakfast!!!
And that was good enough for me. Yay, happy birthday to me!!
