This year, in the Buckingham household,
we have begun what I hope will become a tradition.
No, it isn’t considered a “tradition” to
avoid burning down the house—that is more of a rule inscribed on the third
tablet that Moses dropped and broke by mistake.
Take from that what you will.
At any rate, last year, on January first,
Stij and I each put an empty Mason jar on our respective desks. It was our job, when something terrific
happened all during the year, to write it down on a scrap of paper and put it in
the jar. On New Year’s Eve, we will open
up the jars and read the contents aloud as a way of expressing our gratitude
for the good things life has brought us during the previous year.
We decided to open them a day or two
early on this, the inaugural year. Here’s
how it went:
“Okay, who goes first?”
“I will,” Stij said, fishing out a piece
of paper. He read, “Had the fire extinguishers recharged.”
“And that’s a terrific thing from last
year?”
“Remember the pot roast?”
“Oh…right. Okay, my turn.” I unfolded my
paper. “Made pot roast.”
“Well, I guess that’s a wash. ‘Bought a new ride-on mower.’”
“You sure pick some odd things to put in
your jar. ‘Drove ride-on mower through neighbor’s prize-winning Petunia bed.’”
“Talk about me! How is that
a great thing?”
“It got you that new ride-on mower you
wanted, didn’t it?”
Stij shook his head as if trying to clear
water from his ears. “Remodeled living room.”
I opened my slip of paper. “Saved the
bric-a-brac by setting fire to a giant homemade loaf of bread that attacked the
living room.”
“Remodeled the kitchen.”
“Remind me of why you had to do that."
“Exploding lasagne.”
“Oh…right. But the salad was good, as I remember.”
“You have the memory of a dead
elephant. The ‘salad,’ as you so laughingly
call it had a homemade dressing on it that ate through an anodized aluminum
bowl AND the counter top—and it takes a lot to eat through granite in three-and-a-half
seconds. Have you ever considered a career
in munitions?”
“Tee hee.
Here’s mine, ‘Created a lasagne that looked exactly like the photograph
in the cookbook—before exploding.’”
“Five seconds of pride followed by three
seconds of mayhem and two-and-a-half months of work.”
“Okay, smart guy, let’s hear another one
of yours, then.”
“Okay. ‘Installed steel counter top on
kitchen island.’”
“Didn’t that come under the kitchen
remodel?”
“No that was later on when your chocolate
chip cookies melted the previous one.”
“Oh…right. Here’s one of mine: ‘Feeding the birds.’”
“Here’s mine: ‘Shoveling up and disposing
of 300 bird carcasses after you ‘kindly’ fed them the bird seed balls you made and
hung from the trees.’”
“Oh, come on.”
“’Come on,’ nothing! To this day, Ziplock has no idea that they
actually make body bags. I still don’t
know how you could screw up birdseed balls.”
“Well, the recipe called for suet, which
I didn’t have and had no idea where to get, so I got creative and used Gorilla
Glue instead.”
“Got creative? Got homicidal, you mean. If I hadn’t gotten rid of those bodies
pronto, PETA would have burned you in effigy.
It’s as close as I ever want to get to feeling like a mob clean-up man.”
This was not turning out to be the
uplifting exercise I had originally envisioned.
“Okay, okay! I see that you have one left—let’s hear it.”
He unfolded the last slip. “‘I love being married to my wife because
there is never a dull moment.’”
“Funny, my last slip says the same thing about
you,” I said.
Just goes to show you that the couple
that cooks and rebuilds together stays together.
I have just signed up for cooking
lessons. Stay tuned.
