My Favorite Day

No, it's not Victoria Day (CAN).

Today, October 9th, is my favorite day. It's my wife's birthday.

All day long, I get to think about the woman that I married on October 22, 2006-- the woman with whom I commenced an almost instant online infatuation on February 16, 2003. All there was back then was a screen-name and words. Lots and lots of words. She told me that she had scared off guys before with her garrulous nature-- but with me, it was just another turn-on.

I get to think about my buddy.

Last night, I spent almost three hours meticulously adorning the dining room of the house we bought together in February of this year with streamers. I spelled her name in streamers on our window blinds. Every doorway in the dining room is framed in streamers, as is the wall air-conditioning unit. While I did my little work, I had an old LP, scratchily playing in the background. It is a 1966 D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recording of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Sorcerer. It is an opera all about love and the mixing up of love and losing love and finding love and love potions, and it is most appropriate that it was the musical selection for the night before my wife's birthday because, in February, she and I will appear in The Sorcerer together. I will be the title character-- the mysterious and Machiavellian magician John Wellington Wells, and my wife will be where she likes to be, in the chorus-- a place where she can deftly hide. A place where I never could.

And, as I painstakingly taped red streamers to frame the doorway to the kitchen, as the character Dr. Daly sang about how unmarried and unloved he is,

"Oh, my voice is sad and low
And with timid step I go –
For with load of love o'erladen
I enquire of every maiden,
"Will you wed me, little lady?
Will you share my cottage shady?"
Little lady answers "No! No! No!

Thank you for your kindly proffer –
Good your heart, and full your coffer;
Yet I must decline your offer –
I'm engaged to So-and-so!"
So-and-so! So-and-so!
So-and-so! So-and-so!
"I'm engaged to So-and-so!"

I thanked my lucky stars that I had married So-and-so.

My wife is my buddy, she is my partner, she is my best friend. She embodies all of my hopes and dreams for the future, and within her lies the vast majority of my happiness and my faith in the universe. For, if it aligned so that she and I could meet and fall in love, it can't be as bad as I'm often inclined to think it probably is.

They say that you can't expect your spouse to change for you, but you inevitably change anyway. I've definitely changed since I fell in love with my wife, and it's been for the better. She challenges me to think in different ways, she trusts me with our financial responsibilities, which to this moment rather floors me since I most commonly use calculators as paper-weights. But she trusts me. She trusts me... with money. She trusts me... in the kitchen. She didn't always, though-- at the beginning, when we would bake together, she watched me like a fucking bespectaled hawk. But she's stopped that since, and I've made my mistakes-- mistaking baking soda for baking powder on more than one occasion, resulting in inedible pumpkin bricks. But she's realized that, really, what's the difference if I fuck up a dessert every now and again? What's that worth, when compared to my dignity and autonomy? And, besides, she once made oatmeal cookies and forgot the oatmeal.

I've planned a weekend brimming with activities, and, honestly, some of them might bust. I don't know-- I've never been to any of these places before. It will involve a lot of driving, and I'll be behind the wheel, but I don't care. It's for my buddy. My right hand. My brain. My better half. My best friend. My partner.

Sometimes I look at her and can't really believe that it's all for real. We'll be sitting on the sofa or sitting across from each other at breakfast or in the car on the way to rehearsal and I'll look over at her and I'll just want to start crying. Instead, though, I just say,

"You know what? You're my favorite person. Did you know that?"

"I had a vague idea," she replies, her stock response.

I have to work today, but, as soon as I can, I'm going to get the hell out of here so I can spend the rest of my favorite day with my favorite person.

Good old So-and-so.