A Birthday

I have photographs of so many things in my life, but this one only exists in my mind. Rand (more frequently referred to here as Hubby) drove an old Ford truck that was probably once red, but registered more on the faded orange scale by this time. It had the gear shift on the steering wheel. He let me drive it. I enjoyed barreling down dirt roads at crazily high speeds that made him nervous, but "we" were new enough he didn't like to show it.

On our first date, I ran into the menu sign at Sonic. I was terribly embarrassed, but he was cool about it. That was in my car, not his. But the memory that is really clear is sitting in his old red truck as the sun was setting. It was his 21st birthday.

I gave him a Garfield How to Party book. It came complete with party hats, confetti, and a Happy Birthday banner. He's still got the hats and the banner tucked away in a notebook with all his other treasures from college. It was enough to decorate his truck. Enough for us, anyway. Our relationship was so new it was like that moment at Christmas when you are opening the gift that you think is exactly what you've always wanted, but you're still cautious because sometimes people have a habit of wrapping gifts in boxes made for other than what's inside.

Selecting the book was a painstaking process. We hadn't been dating long enough for anything significant, but it had been long enough that I wanted to give him something. So the Garfield book is what I came up with. Still seems a little silly, but it went over well enough.

This morning I woke up beside him and I thought of that 21st birthday, the first one I ever celebrated with him. Here we are nineteen birthdays down the road. A lot of the birthdays in between are a bit blurred in my memory, but the first one stands out. By my 21st birthday we were married. How did all that stuff get to be so long ago?

There are 40 candles on Rand's cheesecake today. The kids have already worked out a way of placing the candles fairly (they each get to place 13, I get to place 1).

Happy Birthday, Rand!

Let's have a blog shower for Rand's birthday. Everybody go here and leave him a Birthday comment!