Today is hubby’s birthday, his 64th. For the next two months I can brag that he’s as old as me! We’ve been celebrating his birthday together for the past 39 or 40 years and every year I’ve been able to come up with favorite meal requests (birthday people in our family always get to choose the menu for their birthday dinners) as well as ideas for gifts, even if they were sometimes mundane clothing items needed or not. But this year his special day has gone by with no gift. I have to admit it feels strange not to be able to hand over a nattily-wrapped package as proof of my never-ending love and devotion!

He’s always been hard to gift since he rarely wants or covets anything inexpensive enough for me to buy. When he wants something big, like a new computer or wide-screen tv, he’ll usually work up to the point where he’ll buy it for himself. In fact, we’ve both gotten to the point in our lives when we don’t want a lot of new things, and I’ve learned to stay out of bookstores and fabric shops (two of my big weak points) and we get along very nicely on our retirement income. When either of us NEED something, it’s no problem to get it whenever we have time to shop for it.

But I have to admit that it feels a bit wrong not to give a gift at all. So what we have decided to do on his special day is to go down to the local strip mall where he will get a quick haircut in the local cheapo hair shop–you know the kind, walk-in and take your chances on who’ll cut your hair–where he’ll get a super-short clip to last another two or three months. Meanwhile I’ll duck into the local-chain supermarket to pick up the items I’ll need to make his favorite dinner request. In case you’re curious, it’ll be enchilada casserole made with green-peppers and a variety of cheeses with lots of sauce, a salad of iceburg lettuce (which just goes better with Mexican food), and maybe an upside-down pineapple cake (his favorite) for dessert. Nobody said it had to be good for you.

I lift an imaginary goblet of celebratory wine to my hubby, the love of my life, to celebrate his 64 years of life. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, or with anyone else but him!