Good Lordy, That Man's 40!

Today marks the 16th birthday that I've shared with That Man. Actually, we knew each other for a bunch of birthdays before that, but 16 years ago I bought him the first of sixteen birthday gifts. It was a wallet, a leather wallet, and I gave it to him because he was twenty four frickin' years old and a virtual grown-up who needed a grown-up wallet. He had that wallet in his pocket at our wedding two years later, when we bought our house seven years later, and when our first baby was born eight years later. It wore out around the birth of baby number three (twelve years later), but he still has it somewhere. Or one of the kids has it. Or it's in one of the Home Management Systems.

Fact is, it was probably the best present I ever got him because it sorta implied that I could be the girl who would be giving him grown-up presents for the rest of his life. That is, if he was lucky enough, because back then I thought I was something of a catch and though he was funny and cute and funny, I wasn't completely convinced our love affair would last through the summer. But when I went back to school that fall and he went to Taiwan to teach English and sent me flowers from the airport before he left on the plane and wrote me long love letters from an ocean away and went into debt (for the first time) calling me with his credit card, I knew I was the lucky one after all. And that since his credit card was tucked in the fancy leather wallet that I had picked out for him, well, we were officially a couple. Like boyfriend and girlfriend. Like the real deal.

Which was very funny to me really and a gigantically huge surprise because ever since I'd met That Man (when I was 14 and he was 16), he pretty much made teasing me a blood sport. I carried a backpack then -- well, not so much carried it as wore it -- and it was Guatemalan and I was a wanna-be Deadhead and later I covered it in Gary Hart for President pins and that really brought the teasing to a whole. other. level. It was non-stop, especially since by then his best friend and my best friend were all hot and heavy high school sweethearts and so we were at the same parties pretty much all the time during the summer.

It was in my best friend's kitchen, when I was 17 and he was 19, that we kissed for the first time and about which I wrote in my diary the next day: "Last night I kissed bogus That Man." It was also in that kitchen, a couple weeks later, after I'd gotten over the embarrassing kiss that I swore I would never ever never do again, that he told me to watch out because someday he was gonna marry me. To which I said, after promptly turning tail and whipping my backpack with such force I think I smacked him with it, "You are so annnnnoying!!!"

Fast forward a few summer boyfriends for me and summer girlfriends for him to the day when out of that very same backpack fell a Nirvana cassette tape (seriously!) and he picked it up and said, "Cool." And then fast forward through a year of writing letters to each other while he was traveling Australia, New Zealand and most of South East Asia to that first birthday we officially shared together and me giving him a fancy grown-up leather wallet which was pretty much, looking back on it, me giving him my heart.

(Quick side note: he still teased me. In fact, I think it was during that same birthday celebration that he told me I looked kind of like Nick Nolte and when I almost fell off my bar stool, he exclaimed, "But he was People's Sexiest Man Alive!")

Anyhoo, today That Man turns forty. FOUR-TEE. Four oh. And that means he's had 22 (or is 23?) birthdays since he met me, and that must mean something after all.

I do not have a wallet to give him as his second daughter took care of that when she bought him a blue mesh billfold circa 1985 at her school thrift store for Christmas. (Funny, how things come around isn't it?) I haven't got a clue what to give him actually, as he seems to be, as we all do really, so very materially complete, but I do know that this fire starter runt sweet little boy



grew up to be this relentless teaser delinquent upstanding young man



who eventually became this professorial-looking writer Republican husband and father



and it occurs to me that maybe one thing I can give him is a new fake name on this little bloggedy-blog that he suggested I write in the first place.

I've considered a few names including Fran Tarkenton which for some reason neither of us can recall was something I called him back in the day or maybe The Kid which is the nickname he gave himself or maybe Frank Mills because we listened to that song relentlessly the summer we fell in all kinds of love or maybe Old Man for obvious reasons or Ad Guy or Big Daddy or Blackberry or Hunners or Lord and Master. But none of these seems quite right.

He is FORTY now and a little more sensitive and certainly more sophisticated and wizened with age but also a little more creaky and achy and worried that his quest for six-pack abs might be unattainable. And also, he is absolutely one of the good guys, one of the nice guys, one of the best guys, and so deserves something to remind him that -- to me at least -- he will always be 24 and cute and funny.

So Happy, Happy 40th Birthday to the man known here now as The Stud.