A Gift for the Girl Who Has Everything

My dearest husband,

In a few weeks we will celebrate our thirtieth anniversary.  It’s been a good ride.  In the blink of an eye we have gone from starving graduate students to a beautiful family.  Our grown children seem to possess the best qualities of each of us.  In them, I see your quiet determination, your lanky build, your smiling eyes, and your inherent kindness.  I thank G-d every day that you squeezed your telescoping legs into the wheel well seat on a bus just so you could talk to me.   I am glad, despite my mother’s protestations to the contrary, that I gave you a chance to sweep me off my feet.  You have spoiled me, tolerated me, encouraged me, and then spoiled me some more.  I have few regrets.

There is one area, however, where I have been left wanting.  Despite my best efforts to enlighten you on the finer points of the feminine mystique, you still don’t get women.  How many chick flicks must you endure before you grasp the importance of blowing smoke, offering those gratuitous platitudes that make a girl’s heart flutter?  I want to know that I complete you, that you would abdicate your throne for me, that you would want me and only me to be mistress of your Pemberley.  

Do not mistake my petty needs as being ungrateful for the decades you have shared your life with me.  Rather, I simply have not recovered from being left completely unfulfilled at the beginning of this love story.  You see, I am still waiting for a proper marriage proposal.  Somehow, we planned a wedding, walked down the aisle in full view of your family and mine, danced and ate wedding cake.  I have a legal document certifying our status as married.  And yet, the guy who made his mark on the world through a well-stated null hypothesis, clearly articulated specific aims, and evidence presented with statistical significance, failed to make a compelling case.  What you offered was a cavalier throwaway on a drive to the mountains.  “When do you want to get married?” is a question, but it is not the right question.   It hints at a moment in time but skirts any specific promises for the future.  It offers no parameters of mutual understanding.  Simply put, it does not state your case.

This year, as we reflect on thirty years together—well more than half of my life spent by your side—I want only one gift.  I want a proper marriage proposal, one that creates a weak-in-the knees moment about which all girls dream.  I want you to break from character and become the stuff of fairytales and Victorian novels.   I want a story to tell my grandchildren.  I want one of those “moments” that plays back again and again with a crescendo of music.  You have given me almost everything and then some.  I already have ‘happily ever after.’  Can I please have ‘Once upon a time?’

Tomorrow's blog:  Pretty Little Trees and Happy Accidents