Many Happy Returns of the Day

Today is Matt's Birthday. He's so so so much older than me, five whole years. He's turning gray. Well, so am I, but in a numerically lesser amount even though mine show up bright against my dark hair. For his birthday I'm going to let him shave his beard, much as I love it, because he hates it so much. He has ruined and destroyed the delicate balance of points that we hold so carefully between us by replacing my shattered phone. I shattered it myself, through negligence, sloth and vanity and I deserve neither a new phone, nor a new phone so immediately after destroying that which I have had. The world is so full of suffering. I don't deserve a comfortable home, a loving husband, a phone so fancy and amazing that all the knowledge of the world is at the touch of my smooth, callousless finger. I deserve to be alone, unloved, dying of radical Islam or Ebola. But God has been merciful to me. I don't deserve to be married to Matt. I don't deserve all these lovely children. I don't deserve the big glorious tree outside my window, letting fall perfect leaves in scarlet and gold. So I'm really grateful. And because I wasn't left with any money with which to buy my own worthy husband any present, even pipe tobacco, because he wretchedly spent it on me, I offer him, and you, forty-three interesting and clever reasons to be grateful about Matt.

1. He's a real man and not some catalogue of facebook fiction I might have dreamed up for myself.

2. He wakes up at 3:45 to read the bible, pray and work out.

3. He brings me a tray in the morning with whole pot of tea, a cup, and a pitcher of milk.

4. He puts it down silently so that I don't even wake up.

5. He gives me room to read and pray and study and work out but he doesn't shame me when I don't get to it. He basically gives me space and so when I fail, it's myself that I'm failing and not the entire family system.

6. He cares about aesthetics. When a room is wrong, both in color and arrangement, he understands and accommodates and helps me figure out how to put it right.

7. He has a better sense of space than I do.

8. He thinks fussing around with knickknacks and flowers is worthy and normal.

9. He learned to cook after I married him.

10. That being the case, he is a better cook than I am.

11. He is a perfectionist about roasting meat and about sauce.

12. He thinks affording good coffee and tea and wine is necessary and if we have to cut expenses, it won't be there, it will be in the quality of laundry soap and whether or not we own a vacuum. Thank God.

13. He thinks I can teach our children. Cough.

14. He thinks I'm a good mother. Violent coughing.

15. He listens to me talk about the minutia of homeschooling after I've had a glass of wine and I'm raving and incoherent. When I'm in the middle of sentence and they interrupt me, he tells them to go away so that I can keep raving.

16. On my birthday, he insisted that I go out and buy some clothes, knowing that I would still hate myself and that he would gain no rest or peace from my terrible self image and the drip drip drip of complaining self loathing that comprises the complete substance of my inner and outer dialogue.

17. When I scream at the children about how filthy the kitchen is, he backs me, even though I'm the one that's wrong. He doesn't let the children disrespect me, ever, and when they require the discipline and admonishin of the Lord, he steps up so that I can fall back in cluttered weakness.

18. He lets me fuss around the church, doing various jobs, and then stop doing them.

19. He talks to me.

20. I mean, for real, srsly. He actually talks. It's not just me raving and verbally spewing all over everything.

21. He tells me when he's troubled, when he's stressed, when he's unhappy, when he it thinks I'm wrong, when he's happy, when he doesn't understand. He's never silent when there's something real to be discussed.

22. I'm the one that clams up. When I don't have langauge he pries and coaxes and preservers until I can sort out what's not right.

23. He insists that the children drink rootbeer and eat sugar on Sunday.

24. Every summer he digs out some new section of the garden and buys something I think we oughtn't afford to make it lush and beautiful.

25. He was upset that we didn't plant enough bulbs last fall and had a subsequently pitiful spring.

26. He buys trees.

27. He does laundry.

28. He has has a broken appealing look in his eyes acquired sometime during General Convention 2006.

29. He's more patient than I am.

30. I'm fed by his preaching.

31. Every. Single. Sunday.

32. He's good, excellent in fact, at his job.

33. He's interested in the scripture and in understanding it.

34. He's studying Greek obsessively.

35. He really wanted to go get a PhD but because it would have really stressed me, and the children, and taken him away from the church, he put in on the shelf and humbled himself and his ambitions.

36. He gets up with the children at night, while I sleep.

37. He roasts pork on Sunday's and serves it up and gets the coffee and tea while I sit around and wave my hands and talk to all the interesting people that come to Good Shepherd.

38. He takes the girls out for lunch by themselves.

39. He wakes the boys up on Friday mornings and gives them coffee and takes them to Bible Study.

40. When I tell him to buy me flowers, he does.

41. He's grown and changed and listened to Jesus.

42. He let me have my dog, even thought it's completely humiliating for all of us.

43. Sometimes he just goes out and buys cake from the grocery store, or cookies or something, and brings it home, and says, “I thought everyone needed cake.”

So there you are. I could go on, obviously. Happy Birthday Matt. I love you.