Happy Anniversary, Ex-Boyfriend

Once upon a time, I dated the perfect man.  

 

We were madly in love with one another.  We wanted to spend every minute of our lives together.  I often wrote him notes, and he frequently drew me little pictures.  I was often surprised with flowers, and song dedications, and gifts.  Sometimes the gifts were costly, like the jewelry he had to save months to buy.  Other times the gifts were simple but let me know that he paid attention to my likes — my favorite Tic-Tacs picked up on his way out of the gas station, for example.  

We were married on February 13, 1999.  That morning he sent me flowers and a beautiful sapphire and diamond ring.  I was quite certain I’d been swept into a fairy tale.

And then we had a couple of these.

I get flowers once a year now, on our wedding anniversary.  They arrive at my place of work with two balloons — one says “Happy Anniversary,” and the other — due to the proximity to Valentine’s Day — reads “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Unexpected gifts are a notion that make me giggle.  When someone brags that she’s received something unexpected, I think, “She must be single.”

Birthday, Christmas, and Mother’s Day gifts are fairly prescribed now, too.  The man who once so carefully chose gifts for his young girlfriend bought me an air filter for the family minivan for Christmas.  More saddening than that, he’s yet to replace the old one with it.  I’m fully expecting another flower delivery for our upcoming anniversary, and, if I’m lucky, Valentine’s Day will bring another robe I won’t wear, another last minute purchase from Bath and Body Works, or a gift certificate for a massage I’ll never have time to get.

And, honestly, I don’t really miss the flowers or jewelry.  Practicality overtook both of us at some point, and I’m not upset that he doesn’t spend money on things I don’t want.  As much as I love him, though, I do sometimes miss the days when he had time to listen to what I wanted.  

This year I want shutters.  Actually, I really want to sell our house, but he’s adamant that we continue to live in the land of unchained animals, so my compromise is shutters.  

You see, houses without shutters tend to look a bit like this:

(from the-reaction.blogspot.com)

And houses with shutters look a little more like this:

(from longisland.about.com)

I’ve asked for shutters for every gift-giving occasion for the past two years.  In my estimation, it’ll take roughly five more years to get them here, and then I’ll have to wait roughly four hundred years for them to be installed.  I could go ahead and order them, but they’d linger on the Dining Room Table of Uninstalled Dreams alongside the air filter, three-year-old toilet seat, four-year-old mirror, and a television that Santa dropped off this December.  

Sometimes I miss the days when my husband was my boyfriend — when he was able to concentrate his attention and time only on me.  And then I look at our babies, and it’s easy to forgive not being his number one.  He already gave me the two best presents a girl could ask for.