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.
