A telephone. That’s what my husband of two months got me for our first Valentine’s Day together: a purple, Slimline-style model, complete with screws to attach it to the wall.
“You said you wanted a kitchen phone,” Doug said, hopefully, because he saw the what-the-what-the look on my face that hinted it wasn’t what I expected. “And purple’s one of your favorite colors.”
He was right on both counts. And the more I thought about it, as I read the romantic card in the sack with the phone, I realized: This guy knows me. He loves me.
I think about that phone every Valentine’s Day as I decorate the house with treasures from the “big green case of VD,” a plastic bin we’ve lugged around the country over our four decades-plus together.
It’s just one scene in our own version of the late, great “This Is Us,” a TV show which could squeeze tears out of a sack of hammers and make you laugh, too
Even when it’s rotten to its core, this “us” stuff rocks.
We met when I was 19 and on spring break, and he was a 26-year-old drummer. I was underage at the Indiana bar where his band was playing. He had hair past his shoulders and looked like a cross between Captain Hook and Eric Clapton.
The band’s lead singer, prompted by my best friend, carried me onstage and dumped me on the drummer’s lap. With a drumstick still in his hand, he pushed my head against a hi-hat cymbal, kissed me and said, “Hello, little girl.”
We agree now that the fling we had back then was probably best in its short run, given that he was a touring musician and I was a sophomore in college with no goals other than writing The Best Stuff Ever.
And by the time we got together again seven years later and married, things hadn’t changed much. I was waiting tables and writing for alternative (aka puny pay) publications, doing interviews with musicians such as Wendy O. Williams of The Plasmatics. He, who has a degree in sociology from Indiana University, was still playing drums, and painting houses.
Six years into our marriage, he became a juvenile probation officer in Phoenix. I took a job as a reporter because oddly enough, no one had yet shown up with that six-figure The Best Stuff Ever contract.
Step by step, all that sickness and health stuff: This is us
Sandwiched between those take-your-breath-away years and the loud, cruel-words days and nights we weren’t sure we’d make it, we found that sweet spot where only we can go.
The place where we agreed on politics and that we didn’t want children. Laid our parents to rest. Figured out our shortcomings and strengths. Cursed all we wanted and ate a lot of cheap chicken. The place where he handed me a towel as I stood in the shower crying over the scar left from an emergency splenectomy, and we struggled with thousands of dollars in medical bills and crappy credit because of inferior insurance.
More good than bad. More glad than sad.
This is us, in all its silly, splendiferous glory.
I love the way he looks at life. The kinship he struck up with my nephews, whose dad died when the youngest was just 2. I love the teddy bear wearing an I Heart You sweatshirt he gave me one Valentine’s Day, because he knows I don’t care for expensive jewelry but do not want practical gifts on Feb. 14.
I like waking up with someone who has my tea on before my eyes open and shares my affinity for Disney World, Christmas, hockey and TV. Who, when I didn’t think I could succeed as a writer, told me not to talk that way about his wife. Who cocks his head to one side and says “Really?” like Kyle, one of the kids on “South Park,” when someone says something that’s completely obvious or full of guano.
I like sharing life with someone who thinks it’s not a good day without cats around, reads like crazy, knows the history of most every car, war and rock band on earth and tells anyone who’ll listen about how he answered the phone when Tony Bennett called our house to talk to me.
Nine years ago this coming September, I was in Kentucky, putting my mother in a nursing home. Doug called to tell me he’d had a routine physical and that something was not right. That he’d need surgery, and that it was serious. I flew home within hours.
My friends Vicki and Laura, who stayed by my side, told me all the blood drained from my face when the surgeon came in after the hours-long operation. I swear I felt it flow away as I sat there, frozen. I do not remember a word he said after “Your husband is doing well.” He’d said the only words I needed to hear.
Later, in the recovery room, Doug muttered, batting at the apparatus on his face.
I leaned over him, touched his cheek and said, “Dougster, there’s a tube in your nose.”
He opened his eyes halfway. Cocked his head to the right.
“Really?” he mumbled as I squeezed his hand. “Really?”
I have never loved anything or anyone more.
It was so … us.
Really.
Britt Kennerly is education/breaking news/Style editor at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Kennerly at 321-917-4744 or bkennerly@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @bybrittkennerly Facebook: /bybrittkennerly
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: He got me a phone our 1st Valentine’s Day and I knew: This guy loves me
Reporting by Britt Kennerly, Florida Today / Florida Today
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