The Gifts Just Keep on Coming

Sebastien celebrated his 36th birthday last Monday. We were in Chicago visiting friends and family for the weekend so I was completely thrown off guard. (You’d think Facebook would know to nudge spouses a few days ahead of time or something.) While I was contemplating what to get him as a gift, I was reminded of what he gave me for my last birthday: nothing.

This year my birthday fell on a Saturday. I went about my normal weekend routine which includes complaining about how I don’t want to exercise, exercising, complaining about being hungry, eating, complaining about being bored and bugging Sebastien until he finds some way to entertain me. As I went about my day I kept expecting Sebastien to pull out a birthday present. If nothing else it would have certainly placated me for a few minutes. But that never happened. In the evening we met friends for dinner at a restaurant. No present appeared here either.

The following evening I was g-chatting with a friend of mine about how strange it was that I did not receive a present. I was fine with not getting anything, but the expectation was already there because I’d received a gift every other year. I at least wanted to understand where he was coming from. So I turned to face Sebastien on the couch and said, “So am I to assume that you’re not getting me anything for my birthday?”

He looked up from his computer. “What? I took you out to dinner the other night.”

“Oh was that my birthday present?”

“No.” he said. He closed his laptop indicating that what he was about to say was so important that not even the computer could hear. “I have never subscribed to the idea of giving people gifts on specific dates,” he said.

I remembered Sebastien saying this to me when we first started dating. I agreed that I hated the obligation, too. Our shared disdain for social norms was probably what brought us together. But the following Christmas and birthday I received gifts, as did he. I explained this inconsistency to him.

“I don’t remember getting you any gifts for your birthday before.”

I laughed. “Are you kidding me? Every year we exchange gifts.”

“Well I gave you two gifts around Christmas time,” he said.

“Well how was I to know that one of those was a birthday gift?” I said. He had no response. I squinted my eyes trying to comprehend the last 5 minutes of my life. “Who are you?” I said. The question was never answered and the matter was dropped. It was too comical to be of any real significance. Until his birthday.

Monday morning we sat down in the hotel restaurant for breakfast. I remembered the $25 gift card that the concierge gave me the day before while I was checking in. He said it could be used in any hotel facility. I pulled it out of my pocket and slid it across the table at Sebastien. Our eyes met and I smiled. “Happy birthday sweetheart,” I said. “Here’s  a $25 gift card to help you cover the breakfast bill.”

My Cat is Cuter Than Your Baby

After I got married, my social life drastically shifted. Instead of spending all of my spare time in the comfort of my home watching re-runs of Murder She Wrote or making out random lists, I started socializing with people. And most of those people happen to be other married couples, some with children. I’m still socially awkward around them and when I’m not hyperventilating in a public restroom I try to keep my conversations fairly basic: How are you? How are you doing?

That usually gets me through the first 2 minutes. And then I ask the only other question I can think of: How is your baby?

This inevitably leads to another 20 minutes of couples gushing over their child and how amazed they are by their offspring’s simple, oftentimes involuntary acts.

“Charlie smiled today.”

“Shelly farted.”

“Bradley stood up on his own for the first time.”

It is during these moments that I would love nothing more than to crawl back into my apartment and sit alone in the dark (how peaceful). But society frowns upon this sort of behavior. So I go to my fallback plan: I whip out my phone and start passing around pictures of my cat, Siegfried.

If the parents I am with are insistent on their child’s superiority, I follow up with a line of questioning that goes something like this. Does your baby also greet you at the door when you come home? Can your baby chase after a laser pointer? Does your baby even know what a laser pointer is?

That usually quiets them down. Of course, I’m never sure if they stop arguing because I’ve won the debate or if they just have doubts about my mental state. And if you still have doubts, just take a look at these photos of Siegfried.

From Me to We

Lately Sebastien and I have started looking at condos for sale. Sebastien’s looking at 2 bedrooms and I’m really pushing for anything with a bedroom that’s big enough to fit a queen sized bed, two dressers and a nightstand (a hard request in a city like Manhattan). But none of that really matters because we’re not seriously considering buying anything. Or at least he’s not.

Then one day I received some pleasing news. Sebastien sent me an email with a link to an apartment that he said was a “good deal”. It was in a good part of town and it was spacious. I was ready to call it home.

I suggested we go see it and he said it was too far. “But this could be our new home,” I said, our noses touching as we talked in our 3 foot by 3 foot kitchen while making dinner. “Just think of all of the space.”

“I’m not ready to buy.”

I took a step back, banging into the fridge. “You really need to start changing that to we ” I said. “We’re not ready to buy, our house.” I looked down at our cat, Siegfried, “this is our cat.” Then I thought about it for a second. “This is our cat unless we get divorced and then it becomes my cat,” I said. “Do you see how that works?” Sebastien nodded, but I wasn’t so sure he got it.

Later we sat down on the couch to eat our fish and kale. Siegfried hopped up on the couch next to me, staring at my plate. I told Sebastien that this was what was going to happen if he started feeding him pieces of fish from the table. The same thing happened with my family dog, S.A.M.

S.A.M. was a toy poodle and yes his name is an acronym. It stands for Sir Algernon Musorsky (ask my mom she named him). For whatever reason, S.A.M. was fed better than the children in the house: He got meat, milk, cake, ice cream, beer, coffee, whatever he wanted. And of course his wants quickly turned into demands. So anytime someone was at the kitchen table S.A.M. would stand by on the floor, incessantly barking with that high-pitched poodle bark that shook the coffee mugs hanging on the wall, until he was fed. We got so used to his bark that it became our dinnertime music. And none of us could ever figure out why dinner guests were so annoyed.

Siegfried was turning right before my eyes, raising his paw up to my plate. I kept batting him away, but could sense that it was only a matter of time before I gave in. “I told you not to feed him table scraps,” I said to Sebastien. “Look at the monster you’ve created.”

“No, no,” Sebastien said. “The monster that we’ve created.”

I had to hand it to him, Sebastien was a fast learner.

Conversations in Married Land

Me: So I weighed myself at the gym today and I lost one pound.

Sebastien (looking unimpressed): Well a shit weighs about a pound so that doesn’t mean anything.

Me (angry): Well you just took a one pound dump on my head.

Sebastien: But it’s true.

Me: Why do you always have to negate every good thing that happens to me?

Sebastien (sincere): I’m sorry, you’re right. Congratulations on losing one pound. You really needed to lose weight.

Year in Review

Sebastien came home complaining about writing up year-end reviews for some of his work colleagues. He said it was a thankless task and really boring. Which reminded me that our anniversary is coming up.

For the past few days, we have received cards and emails from friends and family members congratulating us on our achievement. I never would have expected anything so nice, but I’m a little disappointed. I mean, what about the six or seven years I put in before we got married? Doesn’t that count for anything?

Of course, we don’t know how long we’ve actually been together because no one marked it on a calendar. But it’s been a long time. About three years ago we started telling people that we’ve been together for five years and it’s been that way ever since.

But now that we’re married, we can look up the exact date that the government so graciously offered to wed us. And perhaps we’ll even celebrate with year-end reviews.

We considered rating one another’s strengths and weaknesses for a few minutes and then decided against it. It was going to be too much work. And I already had a good idea that he was going to tell me that I’m lazy and I need improvement on getting things done. I’d write the same for him.

Usually one of us will start dinner and then at some point get bored and sit down to do something else, forcing the other person to get up and finish cooking lest the apartment burn down. It’s not perfect, but it works for us.

We probably won’t do any cooking for our anniversary. Maybe we’ll go to a restaurant if it’s not too far away. Or we’ll just order pizza.

Unconditional Love

Last Saturday morning, Sebastien woke up and realized that there was no coffee left in the house. So he got dressed and walked three blocks to Zabar’s for a bag of freshly ground coffee beans. He returned and made a pot of coffee.

Curious, I stood up from the couch and walked to the kitchen.

Sebastien turned and handed me a fresh cup of coffee with milk–just the way I like it.

This wasn’t the first time my loving husband fixed me a beverage. Thinking fondly of a previous occasion, I looked deep into his eyes and said, “I hope the coffee cup is clean this time.”

To which he replied, “You can just go straight to hell.”

 

The Shadow of Age

Sebastien and I have only been married for 6 months, but we have aged considerably since the wedding.

Strange sounds now emanate from our bodies, we get up to urinate in the middle of the night far more frequently than we used to and I get way too excited when I start to think about shower curtains.

I didn’t know how much getting married was going to change me. My wedding day was one of the saddest days of my life because it reminded of my own mortality. I felt my bones creak and settle that night as I fell asleep beside Sebastien and my whole future flashed before me.

Now I have to be responsible and get a job and pay bills and clean the apartment and be neighborly and go to bed at a reasonable hour and make a grocery shopping list–OK, I’ll admit that I’ve enjoyed making grocery lists since I was a kid.

But I’m not ready for all of that other stuff.

I want to get more tattoos or go to an Ozzy Osborne concert or sit around and smoke cigarettes with friends while we tell dirty jokes, or skip school to indulge in various illegal activities, but I don’t think anyone in my age range does that anymore. And if I sought out other people with similar interests, it would just make me the weird middle-aged person who hangs out with 18 year olds. I knew a guy like that when I was a teenager, and we only kept him around because he would buy us alcohol.

I’ve tried to fit in to this new role as an adult, but it just doesn’t feel right. And I look at Sebastien and see the same anxiety on his face. We are constantly reminding one another of doctor’s appointments and share weekly recaps of all of our ailments.

But I suppose that despite all of our fatal diseases, it is comforting to know that I am not alone.

After Sebastien’s last doctor’s appointment I asked if he wanted to go out for ice cream. He shook his head no. “It’s not good for my diabetes,” he said.

“You have diabetes?” I said.

“I think so.”

“But you can’t have diabetes now,” I said. “I just got over skin cancer last week.”