Still Doing Things Wrong After 20 Years

Friday, July 30, 2010

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Still Doing Things Wrong After 20 Years

By J’AMY PACHECO

A few days ago, my husband and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary.

This is notable for several reasons. The first is that my husband once swore to me that he’d never get married (or have children, but that’s another story). The second is that both of us almost forgot this landmark anniversary.

It’s not that we didn’t think it significant. On the contrary—we thought it significant enough that we decided to throw a big party combining our anniversary with a housewarming celebration.

We like to throw parties, but we’re not very good at. Oh, everybody always has a good time—but we’re usually up late the night before and early the morning of the event finishing up with cleaning or other preparations.

You’d think we would be used to the routine by now. We’ve been hosting birthday parties, Halloween parties, miscellaneous gatherings and enormous family Christmas sit-down dinners for more than 20 years. But we’re still never ready in advance.

We moved in December, and in keeping with tradition, we didn’t do that very well, either. It’s been seven months, and we still have boxes in the garage that need unpacking.

We haven’t finished renovating our fixer-upper, which, coincidentally, is as old as my marriage. All three bathrooms needed significant cosmetic work; the kitchen can use an overhaul, and very few walls have pictures yet.

So when we decided to throw this party, we decided we should also redo at least the downstairs bathroom. We purchased a new sink and cabinet, a new toilet, and everything else a worn, 20-year-old bathroom would need—except flooring.

The bathroom had well-used linoleum, which desperately needed replacing. I, however, kept putting it off until I could decide what kind of flooring I wanted.

With the party noose tightening around my neck, I chose a lovely neutral-colored porcelain tile with tiny sparkly flecks in it. (Truthfully, my daughter chose the tile based upon the sparkles, but I went along with it.)

When the tile guy came to measure, I asked him to extend the tile to the laundry room and across the hallway that separated the two. He threw in an estimate for re-doing the chipped black tile in our foyer. Throwing caution to the wind, we had him do it all.

For days, I had strange men and women in my house tearing up floors and putting in new ones. Just days before our big party, there was so much new tile in our house that we had to enter and exit through a sliding door in the kitchen and walk around the side of the house.

While all this was going on, the contractor mentioned that his people could quickly finish another flooring job my husband had started in the master bathroom. Out came that toilet, and for days, we found our three bathroom home down to just one. Scary stuff, I tell you.

The night before our anniversary, I approached my husband, who was attempting to attach the porcelain sink bowl to the new cabinet in the downstairs bathroom.

“Honey,” I said. “Tomorrow’s our 20th anniversary. In case I forget to tell you—happy anniversary!”

I pretended not to notice how surprised he looked at the news. With so much going on, and so much work to be done, I knew it would be almost impossible to remember the big day when it rolled around.

The next day, we exchanged anniversary e-mails. He stopped at a local hole-in-the-wall restaurant and brought home tacos for dinner.

We didn’t do our dinner well, either. I later read that one of the symbols of the 20th anniversary is china, and to reflect that, couples should have Chinese food for dinner (presumably served on the symbolic china). We had Mexican instead. Oops.

But we’ve always walked on the strange side of the street. We “dated” for 10 years before the guy who said he’d never get married popped the question at—ironically—a Chinese restaurant. If he hadn’t brought a ring, I would have assumed he was joking.

Six years later, the baby that he swore he’d never have arrived, and now, here we are, looking back at 20-plus years of marching to the beat of a drum only we can hear.

Over the sound of tile saws, that is.