Happy Birthday Ron

Tomorrow is Ron’s birthday. He’s still a lot older than I am, but I am catching up!  Two years ago I wrote an essay for him, and I am replaying it here with some minor updates, because it still applies.  And because I can’t think of a way to put it any better.  Here you go, sweetie.  Happy Birthday:

Tomorrow my husband turns 67.  Two days after that I turn 61.  He is MUCH older than I am.  I call him “Poor Ron.”  I call him that because it can’t be easy, married to me.  Poor Ron.

He is the one who quietly sets up the chairs for the party, sweeps the patio, puts ice on the drinks, extends the table, puts on the fire and vacuums the carpet.

Ron in a quiet moment

He is the one who quietly breaks down the party, puts away the chairs, loads the dishwasher, takes out the garbage, recycles and the bottles and vacuums the carpet.  He loads the washer and changes the tablecloth.

He is the one who asked me out to dinner when I was sitting at the table at the cohousing community he helped design and build.  I was draped in toddlers.  Max was about to be three, Emma was two and Maggie had just turned one.  I was adopting them.

“What?” I said.  “Are you asking me out to dinner?”

“Yes” he said.

“Are you drunk?”

“No,” he said.

Ron adopted us all.  He loves a challenge.

He was the one who owned a 5-bedroom house and didn’t have a girlfriend.  Build it and they will come, I think he was thinking.

He is the one who tried to seduce me with a legal concept, “inevitable discovery.”  It’s exactly what it sounds like.  It worked.

He told me that he’d lived in Hawaii for 13 years, teaching at the University and studying at the East West Center.  I told him that I’d gone to high school in Hawaii and lived there later for a few years.  “I was there,” I said. “Did you see me?”

He is the one who defends the bad guys, those on death row.  He does not want to know if they “did it.”  He doesn’t care.  He stays removed and yet spends years and years and years of his life providing the best defense he can find to keep them alive.  He just wants to keep them alive.  He can stay removed and care at the same time.  I don’t know how he does that.  I can’t.

Sometimes the only thing that has kept us together is inertia.  Sometimes not.  He is funny, smart, kind and generous.  He laughs at my jokes.

He is the one who came to my hospital bed every day for a month, who waited on me when I got home, who took care of everything.  He abhors the death penalty.  This does not apply to cats.  We took Harriet to THE vet trip together when she was 19 and could no longer walk.  He took Tibalt in alone, when I couldn’t walk.

He is the one I love.

He is the one who is there.  He is the one who loves me, no matter what.  He is the one who cares for us all and yet stays a little removed.  Except from me. From me he is not removed.  Poor Ron.