All sorts of things are coming up as I write this – Kentucky Derby, NFL draft days, neighbors and friends coming home from unbearably long cruises – you name it. However, they all pale before Mother’s Day. Some of our friends say that they do not get gifts for one another on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day as the case may be. They indicated that logically they are not each other’s mother or father.
Such logic does not prevail in the Evans household. Inasmuch as I am an extraordinary husband, I always manage to secure an appropriate gift for the Blonde in the house on Mother’s Day, and she does likewise for me on Father’s Day. The problem is “the devil in the details.” That is, what do I get her? We have had a goodly number of
such days since our marriage day of more than a few years ago, and each year brings out the thinking cap which is rather strained from overuse!
One year she made it easy. She said that she would like to have a leaf blower. That shows you what a great lady she is. How many members of womankind do you know who would want a leaf blower? How many husbands do you know whose blondes or brunettes in the house (or an occasional redhead) would bonk them on the head if they were given a leaf blower for Mother’s Day? Probably quite a few! You might even see a headline, “Man found strangled with gift wrapping lying next to a new leaf blower. Wife has no comment”.
She loved it and was very excited. She even baked me a rhubarb pie. Then she took that blower out and there wasn’t a safe leaf anywhere on our lot. Then she started up the street blowing leaves like crazy. Finally the other members of womanhood in the neighborhood stopped her and informed her that only mankind was supposed to use the leaf blower, and she was upsetting the balance of life. She reluctantly brought it home. She did love that leaf blower. She would go out at dusk and blow the leaves and since it was dark, everyone thought it was me. Actually, I was in the house eating rhubarb pie!
That was an easy solution, but it is another year with another need for my thinking cap. I have thought about getting her another leaf blower as that one wore out after a year or two. Most likely that will not work as we really do not have many leaves where we live now. The previous owners planted palm trees, and it would take a heck of a blower to get those denuded. Now, if they made one powerful enough to blow the whole palm tree down, I might get one for myself since that kind of tree and I are not compatible
I considered a pink hammer and screwdriver, but she still has the ones that I bought her in ’65. Aha! I have it now; I will purchase a nice pink electric mixer and rolling pin (they will go with the hammer and screwdriver). The mixer will make it much easier to make rhubarb pies for Father’s Day, and the rolling pin will make it faster when she makes snails. (Snails are made with excess pie crust that is cut in strips, and then spread with butter, sugar and cinnamon. They are then rolled up and baked). That gives me something to eat while the pie cools.
I am truly an extraordinary husband!
Barry Evans is a resident of The Villages.