Sam and I are in great danger of overdosing on Sex and the City. It all started when we would catch a random rerun here or there on E!, which led to my offhand comment that the editing for TV has completely ruined the show. In what was likely also an offhand comment, Sam expressed muted and passing interest in watching the unneutered version, and I seized upon his momentary lapse of judgement. Two weeks later, we have left seasons one and two in our collective dust and are quickly plowing through the third, in spite of his (muted and passing) protestations.
In one of the (four) episodes we watched last night, Miranda revealed her age to be 34. I told Sam that in three years, I will be Miranda's show-age. "Weird," I said. "I used to think they were so much older." He replied in a huff, "Well, thank you, sweetheart," overemphasizing the last two words in the way he does when wants to feign annoyance.
Or maybe he wasn't feigning. Today is, after all, his birthday. For some portion of this day, before the passage of one particular minute of one particular hour, he is 39. After, he will inextricably turn 40.
I know that there is some cosmic and intangible significance to turning 40, but I couldn't describe it any better than just that, and Sam has yet to show any awareness of (or desire for) this significance.
I wanted to throw him this big party or make a hullabaloo over the occasion, but I just don't have the creativity or know-how to pull it off, and he's not really a hullabaloo kind of guy. We are two pretty introverted people who keep mostly to ourselves, so a surprise party would likely have two attendees: me and Grr, which is hardly a party, and even less so a surprise (unless Grr behaves like a good pup, which would lately be quite the surprise). So instead, we fall back to tradition: a nice and quiet dinner out.
We have done this every year for his birthday for the last five years. He was 35 when we met. That little statistic came to me this morning at the gym, followed quickly by its corollary: I was 26. I shudder a bit to think of who I was when I was that age, lost and confused (more so than I am now, anyway) and unsure of what I wanted from love. I look at myself now, glad that I at least have that last part mostly sorted out, and I barely resemble the person I was back then.
On the flip side, I can still see every trace of the Sam I met five years ago, the man I sat next to at Brick, an up-and-coming restaurant in the forever-on-the-verge Tenderloin neighborhood. We had just met a few weeks ago, yet there we were, celebrating his 35th birthday, and me with awe in my eyes wondering what I did to capture the attention of someone who could make me laugh in a way that I had to find myself afterwards.
I wished then that I had I known him all of my life, and all of his as well. I still do, but I'll take what I can get, and I'm certainly not complaining. 35 was, after all, just the beginning. 40 is just getting good.
No comments:
Post a Comment