You know, my husband is a romantic soul. I was teasing him last night. Something we were watching on TV reminded me of how simple our life used to be before the house, the dogs, the daughter, and the careers, back when we were going to school in Toronto, living on our own and responsible for only ourselves. So I asked him if he missed that. "Missed what?" he asked. You know, just being able to quit a job if we didn't like it, deciding on the spur of the moment to go home for the weekend and only packing a shirt and a change of underwear and socks.
"Yah sure" he says. So a little time goes by and something else on the TV triggers another memory. So I say, "You know, I was telling Jennifer (our life insurance rep) about you rebuilding me the Eliminator (motorcycle) for Christmas and she just sat there with her mouth open", "So?" he says. "Well, don't think I don't know that deep down you are quite the romantic" I say. "Yah OK" he says condescendingly.
No really. I had to point out a few memories I have of him.
So... one year, when we lived in Toronto going to school, Hubby was working at a Greek restaurant a few blocks from our apartment. It was back in 1991. We had been experiencing heat waves, lots of heat waves. Hubby and I could often be found melting into a pool of flesh on the floor of our living room, under the ceiling fan (no air conditioning), lying in our underwear watching TV, praying for a breeze from the window. So, this particular day, Hubby was at work and I was expecting him home any minute. I was sitting on the floor with a cold cloth on my head. I heard the door open downstairs and Hubby running up the stairs and jogging down the hall to the living room. Door opens and there is Hubby standing there in a t-shirt and shorts sweating his ass off. It was easy to see that he had run all the way home from work. In his hands he was holding a half melted banana split from Dairy Queen. He had the goofiest grin on his face. I look at him, I look at the melting ice cream and I say "What! No spoon?". With a look of triumph, he reaches back and whips out a plastic spoon and napkins from his back pocket. "Ah HA!" he says. Holly crap did I giggle. He didn't even get one for himself. He just sat there with his goofy grin and watched me eat it.
So I remind him of this. And he is simply looking at me, so I say...
"OK. Remember how you used to have to go home to visit your friends at least once a month?"
This one time, he was bugging me to go home for a weekend, but I had so much work at school to do that I couldn't go. So he waffled on going and staying for several days. Friday comes and he has decided to go. His train was going to leave before I got home from work, he had told me he felt awful about going without me. I told him to go, after all he was hard to live with if he didn't get out of the city once in a while.
So I come home from work and at the top of the stairs to our apartment I find a note from him. The note says again how much he'll miss me and also tells me that in his absence, he has tried to leave a little bit of him here for me so I won't get lonely. Here is where it gets really nuts. See hubby had left notes everywhere. Not just notes. Instructions. In the first note on the top of the stairs he has told me he made dinner for me and it is in the fridge. In the fridge was a plate with an uncooked hamburger patty, with all the fixing wrapped separately, onions, lettuce, and tomato. The ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard are all line up beside the plate and on the plate is a note "How to cook a hubby-burger" Very explicit instructions as to the order things were to be done and how to place the tomato just so. I ate dinner with a smile. I went to draw a bath and he had laid out bubble bath, towel, soap etc. complete with a pile of icy-squares (my favourite chocolate at the time) and a note. Telling me how much he loved me. He had even written on the mirror, left notes to drop out of the toilet paper as it was used. In the living room, he had written out a schedule of the times I could find my favourite TV programs on, and had laid out a pile of Reece’s Pieces (another favourite). He had even written an "I Love You" note and placed it on Abraham (pet rat)'s cage. There were notes in coat pockets, notes in school books, notes in our closet. He had laid out a favourite shirt I wore to bed on our bed with a pile of icy-squares on my pillow. For the next few days I was embarrassed by notes falling out of books in class, notes in my camera bag, and notes in my grocery store uniform. Even after he came back from his trip, I was still finding notes. How the hell he had found to time to come home from school and do all that before he had to scramble to catch the train I'll never know. But it still made me smile a few weeks later when I found a note fastened with elastic to a can of tomato soup, my favourite.
So, that brings me to the story of the motorcycle. I might have blogged this before, but it is relevant here. I met my hubby almost 18 years ago, and I am only 35. Back then, as now, he lived on a motorcycle. So one day he bought this Eliminator. He loves the power of a motorcycle. He is not into Harleys, he likes straight line haul ass kind of power. Street bikes and such, anyway. He got this crazy idea that he would teach me how to ride. So here, it is probably appropriate to tell you that Hubby was supposedly from the wrong side of the tracks, not true but - my parents would have thought so. I, on the other hand, was going to catholic school, wore the uniform (kilt) and everything. It must have been some sort of schoolboy fantasy. No one in my school even owned a motorcycle, let alone rode one. To think if me back then, straight A's, into playing classical guitar and art... definitely NOT one of the "popular girls - let along one of the popular crowd, pulling up the school on a bad ass bike kilt flying out behind me, glimpses of white "pure good girl" underwear here and there, makes me smile now. Back then, I guess I agreed to his crazy plan because it would have been some sort of perverted way of getting back at all the people who never paid attention to me I guess. Anyway, so I got my learners permit and Hubby taught me to ride. The night before I was supposed to take it to school, I had a bad experience on the way home and lost all confidence in taking it to school. My view was, when I explained it to him, that if I couldn't pull up and take off with a flourish of "screw you all (but hopefully I hope you are watching me cause I secretly want to be popular)", then I wouldn't do it. So that fantasy of his never happened.
But we did ride everywhere together. Visiting my mom 3 hours away when she and my dad divorced, going out and riding with friends. And then he sold it. So over the years, he has seen it sometimes and then not. About 17 months ago, he found out a buddy of his who used to own the bike had found the Eliminator once again, in rough shape (it had been downed and left outside in the elements) and bought it with the plans to rebuild it. But he didn't get around to it and my husband got it in his head that he didn't want to see the bike just rust away - he owed it to the bike. So he bought it, in boxes, and over a 5 week period, he completely rebuilt it, without me knowing it, and Christmas Eve 2003, he surprised me it. Who cares if I didn't know how to drive it anymore. I would damn well learn. I KNOW what that bike means to him, what it means that he would do that for me, how much work he had done to surprise me and that he wanted to share his love of motorcycles with me. And it's mine.
There is a reason Jennifer's jaw dropped when I told her the story. How many people do that kind of shit? For anyone!
Isn't he romantic? I got a knowing smile from him, I think he is secretly satisfied with himself.
