Bold birthday

Today is my wife’s birthday. Happy birthday, honey!! I will not share her actual age, because even in this day and age, that is still not appropriate. Let’s just say that she is as young at heart as she was when I first met her.

To honour her, I wanted to give her a gift that is worthy of her and all that has done for me over the years. This is no easy thing, since she basically saved my life when we first met (a different story) and she has put up with my fickle, self-serving nature for 30 years. In fact, it is a joke between us that I am so much in her debt that it will take a lifetime of husbandly devotion to pay it. This is a cost I am more than willing to shoulder.

Now I do not have the best track record when it comes to gift giving. One time, I spent an entire year creating a book of poetry for her, which seems pretty darned romantic until one finds out that my wife doesn’t like poetry at all. It now resides on a shelf somewhere, gathering dust, forgotten. I could have saved a lot of time and energy and frustration (hers) by foregoing the grand gesture and simply writing her a nice romantic story, using a language that is far more accessible and from the heart.

At another time, I thought I would be countercultural and instead of getting her a fancy ring, I bucked the trend and got her a nice golden locket with our pictures on the inside of it. It would remain near to her heart and she could open it at any time and be witness to two people who love each other. Brilliant, right? Not really. It turns out that my wife is a bit of a traditionalist and it had always been her dream to receive a beautiful diamond ring. If I had known her better, I would have known that and have given her what she wanted. A real indictment against me.

So you could imagine that I was in a bit of a quandary. A lot was riding on this gift, and no ideas were coming to mind.

But in her classic style, my wife recently bailed me out and gave me a gift recommendation (likely to save herself from receiving yet another inappropriate gift). She told me that I should cook her a meal.

Now in my defense, I had often suggested this to her, since she has made me such amazing dishes for our entire marriage. And now, after 30 years, she has finally gathered up her courage enough to risk it all and allow me to cook for her.

And a risk it is. To help you understand, let’s go back to when I first met my (future) wife. I was living in a bachelor suite at a beautiful apartment complex on U of A campus, and I had been living on my own for many years by that point. I had some pretty set routines, such as keeping my place spotless, and I had a fixed collection of meals that I made on a fixed schedule. Monday was chicken and rice, Tuesday was meat loaf, and so on.

One day, I invited her to my place so that she could share a lunch with me. If I remember correctly, I made something as fancy as instant noodles transformed into a stir fry, complete with sautéed celery and sliced mushrooms. I was actually pretty proud of myself for thinking outside of the box and not simply boiling the noodles, as the instructions recommended, and I even made the eating process more efficient by breaking up the noodles first before boiling them. She was gracious and enthusiastic when she received this culinary creation, but as I discovered later, she was a pretty good actress. Turns out it was rather tasteless and sadly, breaking the noodles is a serious transgression in Asian society. Whoops!

As we spent more and more time together, she came to discover my many lapses in the kitchen. I made rice from a pot, where the water always seemed to overboil and spill into the tray under the element, and the rice always seemed to come out wet and sticky (if only I had a rice cooker during those years!!!). When I made oatmeal and cream of wheat, I watched those pots so carefully, making sure I used the optimal timing for stirring and heating – and the results were always quite disappointing (funnily, my wife now simply puts them in the pot and walks away, never once looking at them, and they always come out better than what I did). My meat loaf was bland, my steaks were tough (the only thing rare about them was them tasting good), and my pasta was … packaged.

As I write this, I am getting more and more convinced that my wife married me as a humanitarian effort. She knew that I would never be able to get along by myself, and so in a grand sacrifice, she accepted the burden of taking care of me in the hopes of saving me. Humbling, to be sure, but there is likely a lot of truth in this perception.

But why does she wish to add to her sacrifice by asking me to feed her? Is she a sucker for punishment? For the decades that we have been together, she has had a strict rule: I am never allowed to enter the kitchen and prepare a meal. I have adhered to this restriction, and as such, the health of the family has blossomed as a result.

Yet she has waived this policy for her birthday, allowing me to enter the hallowed hardwood floor of our recently renovated kitchen and to desecrate it with my inept culinary skills. I shudder at the infractions that I might commit as I prep the ingredients and cook them on the stove.

Let’s just say that I will keep the Pepto Bismol and Gaviscon at the ready, I will keep a vomit bag within hands’ reach at the table, and I will have the numbers for the local clinic, hospital, and CDC available. I just hope she lives through this experience.

Happy Birthday? More like Joyous Survival Situation!