On the third page of the Harmony Herald, opposite the editorial page, is the “Years Past” column. Every week, Bob Miles Jr. sorts through the boxes of old issues of the Herald and reprints articles from ten, twenty-five, and fifty years ago.
Because I prefer what has been to what will be, the “Years Past” column is the first thing I read when the Herald lands on my doorstep. The past is my sitting at Grandma’s table eating rhubarb pie, with Grandma hovering over me, spooning another piece on my plate. The future is the bank repossessing my house and my having to take my family to live with my spinster aunt in the next town over. So I love opening the Herald and backing up twenty-five years.
The first week of August I was reading the “Twenty-five Years Ago This Week” section about when I was a child and the Harmony Little League All-Stars won the state championship. It all came back—how that September the All-Stars had paraded down Main Street, riding on a float in the Corn and Sausage Days Parade, just behind the Sausage Queen, with Bob Miles Sr. snapping their picture, which he ran on the front page of the Herald.
Twenty-five years later, Bob Miles Jr. reprinted the picture. Skinny boys with big ears and buzz haircuts. The boys were my age—I knew them all—and though I had played Little League, I hadn’t made the All-Star team. I was extremely farsighted. My mother wouldn’t let me wear my glasses for fear they would break. I would stand in the outfield and squint toward home plate, praying for God to direct the ball away from me.
The other players on our team would crouch and yell, “Hey batter, hey batter, hey batter…” They sounded like crickets. I never yelled because I didn’t want the attention. I didn’t want the batter to sense my presence and hit the ball my way. I would watch the pitcher wind up and hurl the ball. I could see the ball leave the bat. I could see it sail through the air in a high arc. I could hear Coach Kennedy yelling at me to catch it, but as the ball came closer I’d lose sight of it. I would stab my hand in the air, and more often than not, the ball would strike me in the head. After a while, I learned to drop to the ground and cover my head whenever the coach called my name. This saved my head but wrecked my chance to play on the All-Star team.
Now, twenty-five Augusts later, it is a slow news month. We sit on our porches and drink iced tea and don’t generate much news. The only thing for Bob Jr. to write about is the heat, which we already know about. So Bob ran an extended version of the “Years Past” column. I read it in reverse, starting with fifty years ago, then twenty-five, then ten. I got to the “Ten Years Ago This Week” section. There was my name: “Samuel Addison Gardner and Barbara Ann Griffith were joined in holy matrimony this past Saturday…”
I stopped reading. I counted back on my fingers. A panic gripped me. My tenth anniversary was the next day and I had forgotten it.
I heard the phone ring, heard my wife yell that she would answer it. I could hear her talking, faintly. “Yes, it’s ten years tomorrow, but I think Sam’s forgotten. I’m not saying anything. I’m just going to wait and see what happens.”
I had not done well with anniversaries. On our fifth anniversary, which was the “wood” anniversary, I went to the lumberyard and bought two wooden posts and built Barbara a clothesline and gift-wrapped some wooden clothespins, which I thought was a creative gift. I thought everyone liked clotheslines and falling to sleep on line-dried sheets. I was wrong.
On our sixth anniversary I gave her a personalized license plate with her initials, which spelled out the word BAG, which did not occur to me until I took her by the hand and walked her outside with her eyes closed. I positioned her in front of the car and said, “Okay, you can open your eyes now.”
Barbara opened her eyes and looked at the license plate, then at me, then back at the license plate. I could see her lips move. “Bag,” she was saying. Then she turned to me and said, “I didn’t think you could do worse than the clothesline. I was wrong.”
Now our tenth anniversary was one day away and I had nothing planned. I called a gift shop in the city to find out what to buy for tenth anniversaries. I couldn’t call the local store. They knew my voice. They’d say, “Is that you, Sam Gardner? Why are you just now asking?” and it would get back to my wife. There is no privacy in this town. Your stupidity is laid bare for all to see.
Since my fifth anniversary, gift giving had grown more complicated. The saleslady told me I could choose between giving a traditional gift or buying a modern gift. The traditional gift for tenth anniversaries was aluminum. Aluminum was within my budget. I liked that. The modern gift, the lady told me, was diamond jewelry. I didn’t care for that at all. I wondered who changed it.
I’m a traditionalist. I don’t do something just because it’s a fad. I went with aluminum. I bought Barbara ten cans of diet soda in aluminum cans. One can for each year. I gift wrapped each one. She’d like that, unwrapping ten separate gifts. She’d think it was creative.
That night as we lay in bed, she asked, “Should I make plans for tomorrow, or did you maybe have a little something in mind?”
“Nothing special,” I told her. “Just another day. Got to go to the office, then do some visitation. But I’ll be home for supper. Could you maybe make some of that good meat loaf you make? We haven’t had that in a while.”
It was dark in our bedroom. I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear her let out a sigh, then a snort. It was resignation working its way toward anger. I couldn’t wait for the next day. Wouldn’t she be surprised! Ten cans of diet soda. What a fun surprise!
When I woke up the next morning, Barbara was gone. There was a note on the table saying she’d gone for a walk. A long walk. She had underlined the word long and had pressed down hard with the pencil. I could see where the lead had broken.
I waited for her to get home. I heard her in the kitchen. She was standing at the sink. She turned to face me, and I held out a wrapped can. She smiled a big, pretty smile, then hugged me and said, “You remembered.”
“Of course I remembered,” I told her. “I’d never forget our anniversary.”
She unwrapped it, then looked at me.
I smiled. “Aluminum,” I told her. “The tenth year is the aluminum year. Isn’t that great? I got you ten of them. Get it? Ten cans of soda for ten years of marriage. Isn’t that great?”
She didn’t say anything. She unwrapped the other cans. She was working her way from resignation toward anger. She got to the last can. That was the can I’d taped the diamond ring to. When we’d married, I didn’t have enough money for a diamond ring. When she agreed to marry me, I promised her that someday I’d buy her one.
She’d told me, “You don’t have to. It wouldn’t make us any more married. I’m not marrying you for a ring.” Which made me want to buy it for her all the more.
A couple years after we married, my grandmother died and left me two thousand dollars. I put it in the bank. It was our emergency money. It was money for desperate times. With our tenth anniversary only one day away, I was desperate. I took the money and drove to the city and bought the ring.
Barbara unwrapped the last can. The ring was taped to the top, bright and shiny.
She began to weep. This beautiful woman who had worked to put me through school, who had borne our children, who had told me she liked the license plate after all and had taken it off the car when we’d sold it and bolted it to our new car.
“Times have changed,” I told her. “The traditional tenth anniversary gift was aluminum. But the modern gift is diamond jewelry. You know me, I like to keep up with the times.”
Late that afternoon I went up to the attic and looked through the boxes for the champagne glasses from our wedding day. It took two hours to find them. It was August-hot. I called my mother to tell her that she wanted to take her grandchildren for the night. I washed the champagne glasses and took a shower and put on my suit. Barbara was out at the clothesline. I called her into the house.
She walked in, wiping the sweat from her brow. I handed her a champagne glass of diet soda.
“It’s can number one,” I told her. “I’ve heard it’s a good year.” Then I kissed her. Then we did something else, on which I won’t elaborate because I’m a traditionalist.
Afterwards, we talked. She said, “You’re a piece of work, Sam Gardner. I had my doubts about you, especially after the clothesline and the license plate, but you’re doing better.”
I told her when you’ve been hit in the head with a baseball as many times as I have, it takes a while to get over it.
I love my wife. I can’t believe she chose me. When I was growing up, no one ever chose me for anything. We would pick teams for baseball, and the captains would argue over me.
“You take him.”
“No, you take him.”
I would stand, squinty eyed, staring at the ground, digging at the dirt with the toe of my shoe.
Then I went to college and met my wife. She sat next to me in the dining hall. I thought maybe she’d lost a bet and that sitting with me was the penalty. The next day she sat by me again, so I asked her name.
“Barbara,” she told me.
“That’s a pretty name,” I said.
“It means stranger,” she confided.
Sitting there, looking at her, I felt smooth and witty. I said, “Hello, stranger. Pleased to meet you. My name is Sam,” I told her. “It means one who listens.”
So we sat together and she talked and I listened.
I still can’t believe she married me. I look up from the pulpit and see her in the fifth row, just behind Miriam and Ellis Hodge. I watch her push her hair behind her ears, how it sweeps over her shoulders. Watch her eyes. She has one blue eye and one brown eye. People look at her and suspect something is a little different, but can’t quite put their finger on it. When she was a child, it made her self-conscious.
She isn’t perfection, but then I’ve never been drawn to perfection. When I was twelve years old and watched the All-Stars riding in the Corn and Sausage Days Parade, I saw how perfection went to their heads. It ruined them. Fifteen boys who, before perfection visited them, were easily tolerated—but in perfection became unbearable. Having tasted perfection so young, they assumed perfection would be their life’s pattern and have been disappointed ever since.
But since I was acquainted with failure from an early age, I made my peace with it and am pleasantly surprised when life goes well. Ten years in a wonderful marriage, with two healthy sons. It shocks me to think of it. So blessed.
It is easy, in these aluminum years, to believe in a loving God. It’s the only thing that makes sense. It isn’t skill and pluck and hard work that get us where we are. It’s grace, nothing else.
It’s God, pointing the divine finger our way, saying, “You there, with the squinty eyes, digging your toes in the dirt, it’s you I want.”
Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting at God’s table and I’ve just finished one piece of blessing, and God smiles and says, “Here, Sam, have another.”
That’s how it feels. That’s exactly how it feels.