August 25th. Ah, I now remember it well, thanks to Peg who sweetly asked me over our first cup of coffee, “Jim, isn’t this just a beautiful morning?” I looked up from the trial transcript I was proofreading and grunted, “Yeah”. Things went downhill from there.
As Peg had interrupted my work I assumed she would be pleased to get me some more coffee; so I held up my cup and said as politely as Oliver Twist, “More”.
Her response threw me off: “It’s in the coffee pot. Why don’t you see if you can pour your own while I concentrate on making the bed, emptying the dishwasher, feeding the cat, sweeping the floor and pulling the weeds in the garden? By the way, Happy Anniversary!”
I went into crisis-recovery mode. “Are you sure, I thought it was the 25th.”
“Today IS the 25th and you should already know that since I made a point of telling you yesterday on August 24th that I was planning your favorite dinner for today. Of course, you had your head stuck in that transcript then and merely mumbled something like ‘Okay’”.
Thinking at warp speed I said, “Oh what a grand wedding it was on such a gorgeous day.”
“We got married in a thunderstorm! You kept telling me ‘It never rains on August 25th so we can have the wedding outside’. But our family and guests had to dodge lightning bolts and huge raindrops!”
“Well, at least our D.J. stayed dry.”
“Our D.J. was Rodney Fetcher and he had to set up in the tool shed so he wouldn’t get electrocuted!”
“Yeah, he did a great job. Remember, we did our first dance to Here Comes the Sun by George Harrison.”
“It wasToday by Randy Sparks of the New Christy Minstrels.”
“Anyway, you looked great in that blue dress.”
“It was coral to match your tux. Which, by the way, you managed to spill our champagne toast on.”
I decided to take an old friend’s advice for situations such as this, “When in a hole the first thing is to stop digging.”
“Okay, what do you want to do to celebrate this happy occasion? Dinner at the Red Geranium? A quiet glass of wine out by the fire pit? Whatever sounds good to you will be fine with me.”
“I would have appreciated it if you had simply remembered that we did, in fact, get married.”
“I do remember and it was, I mean is, wonderful. It was just that it snuck up on me. Would a movie help?”
“No movie, no Red Geranium, no wine by the fire. How about just a card or at least some flowers?”
Oh, Gentle Reader, I don’t know about you but all I can hear going on in my head is the duet by Hermione Gingold and Maurice Chevalier from the musical Gigi. Perhaps Peg will allow me up from the canvas if I bring home a box of chocolates with the Lerner and Loewe lyrics taped to them:
“The dazzling moon,
There was none that night.
The month was June
It was [August};
That’s right …”
Well, you get the idea. I’m just glad we have only one anniversary per year because the chill in the air at JPeg Ranch is not conducive to my getting my work done and anything else is completely out of the question.