Happy Birthday, Peggy!

I'd like to suspend all the jocularity and bon-vivance that normally flows from this blog like cocktail sauce at an oyster roast to salute the birthday of the finest person I shall ever meet. It's my wonderful wife, Peggy. She might attend your oyster roast, but she's allergic to seafood, but she never complains about it. Nor anything else.

If you have been in my company for more than five minutes, you have likely heard our story of meeting on a blind date on a Thursday night, and my suave, debonair call at 3 AM the following Monday morning to ask her to marry me. All that took place before Nixon even left office - in fact, it was during the summer of '73, the height of the Watergate investigation, and it banished that high-water point in American history to second place for that year for me. That means we are coming up on 37 years together this summer! 37 years! 13,505 days that I awoke with a song in my heart and my socks in my hands, so happy to be in love with such a kind woman. 13,505 sunsets later, we still get a big boot out of seeing how the sky lights up at night, and King of Queens reruns, and all sorts of little things.

And oh, how she loves it when I have a cold - what we men know as the Death Grippe - and I lie in the dark bedroom until Peggy comes in, and I say, in a wan, yet manly voice, "Peggy, is that you?" She finds that enchanting, every time!

This winter I have been dealing with some lower back issues and resultant sciatica (be sure to see this space next week when I describe, in lurid detail that only my fellow claustrophobics will appreciate, the half hour - 1,800 seconds - I will spend in a MRI tube.) Of course, Peggy will take me to this appointment, and I promise you, I will be sitting in the recliner until she draws near, and I will say, "Is it time?" the way they used to do in prison movies. To try to make me feel better, Peggy has massaged my back morning and night, made sure I took all my various meds, and encouraged me every step of the way. Not to mention getting out there with a snow shovel and pitching in by pitching snow with me. Not to mention making sure my heating pad was always there for me. Not to mention that she works hard, full time, to help us afford the semi-opulent lifestyle in which we flourish. Not to mention how hard she works to help take care of my Mom's groceries, bills and finances. Oh, I could go on, but you know what? Whatever it is that needs to be done to make everyone around her happy and taken-care-of, that's what Peggy does, and never anything less!

If you know her, then you know why I love her so much. There is no question that she is the kindest person around, and how she wound up with such an oafish galoot as I is a favorite topic of family discussions. If you don't know her, I wish you did.

Because then you would understand why the rest of us love her like we do.

Happy Birthday, Peggy! I love you!