Thursday is my husband’s birthday. I haven’t bought him a present. It’s not that I haven’t thought of it, but we’ve been in the mountains, away from shopping, and honestly, we’ve come to the point in our lives where we don’t actually need or want a whole lot and what we do need or want, we buy it. Hmmm. I could order him a movie from Amazon or drive somewhere and buy something, but I think instead I’ll make him a cake here in the camper and find ways this week to let him know how much I cherish him.
There’s a lot to cherish. When Karl and I got married, he didn’t just get a wife, he acquired a ready-made family. It took a while for all of us to gel into a unit, but Karl didn’t give up. He taught my children (who became our children!) how to have fun and live full out. We used to have momentous waterfights (I remember once when the kids had control of the hose in the front yard, leaving Karl with just a water pistol. He ran to the back yard, brought the back yard hose THROUGH THE HOUSE AND OUT THE FRONT DOOR, and evened up the odds), he gave them permission to not like lima beans (and then taught Sam how to line them up on his plate and flick them at me…lima beans came off the menu at that point!), he modeled honesty and hard work and picking yourself up after trouble with the intent of continuing on. He cheered for them while sitting in the bleachers, yelled at them when they were wrong (and probably sometimes when they weren’t, but hey…). He taught them to build and fix and make things, and how to be a decent human beings.
I’m the more educated of the two of us. We’d been married a couple of years when I finished my Master’s Degree. For a while, I thought I was the smarter of we two. It was, perhaps, an easy mistake to make at that point. Karl ran heavy equipment when we got married, driving huge scrapers and motor graders and dozers and backhoes to do dirt work for large projects (like dams and pipelines, or the foundation of a sports facility at the university). He was definitely a workin’ guy, doing what he was told and doing it the best he possibly could. I learned how wrong I was about feeling intellectually superior through a long and winding road. He went to school to learn electronics. He was so good at the school, that when he graduated, one of the instructors arranged for Karl to teach the class himself for several weeks so that the teacher could take a vacation. Over the years since then he has, as our son Sam describes it, “Reinvented himself” several times. He taught himself how to be the owner and CEO of two companies, and retired last year by selling a business he took from near bankruptcy to respected and highly profitable. I can’t even begin to think through problems and solutions like Karl can. I know a lot about literature and teaching kids, he knows so much about so much more.
Karl is the strongest man I have ever met. No, he can’t bench press half a ton, but he has faced and overcome so many obstacles with his health that if I were to list them, you’d wonder why and how he is still alive and moving. From breaking his neck to tick fever to passing a gall stone while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge (Now, that is a story all by itself!!), to knee surgery, to the arthritis in his hands that makes them ache every day, Karl has faced lots of issues with such stoicism and humor. Others might just succumb to the pain or give up or become angry or whiny. Not Karl. He ran a backhoe while wearing a halo brace and slid into second base two seeks after knee surgery. Instead, Karl keeps moving and doing with a sense of humor and determination that makes me a better and stronger person just because I am beside him.
It has been my great privilege in the 34 years I’ve been married to him and the 47 years I’ve known him to watch how he has grown and how he walks in his faith in God. He’s gone from a young man whose temper often ruled him to a quiet and God-assured man. And he is quiet. He won’t often pray aloud, he doesn’t speak up in groups (about his faith or anything else), but he never hesitates to show God’s love and kindness whenever he can. I’ve watched him turn around on the highway and drive back so that he can lend a hand to someone marooned on the side of the road. Once he bought two tires for a complete stranger so that she could continue her journey. He is generous and quick to give, and he uses his talents and his tools to speak of God’s love a grace to others.
There’s so much to cherish about Karl. I am so thankful to be his wife, his partner, his friend. I’m so thankful for the things he has taught me, the ways he has enriched my life. I thank God every day for him. Happy birthday, Love.
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