NEWLY Ninety

Penny the year we “dressed up” for the annual 12/11 celebration of Bill Roger’s Dec. 10 and Penny’s Dec, 12 birthday. What fun we had!

Sometime in August we had a delightful informal family gathering on Norma Marshall’s deck. Norma was married to Howdy’s brother Strother so is my ex-sister-in-law. Both their sons were with her plus her daughter-in-law and her three grandchildren, two with spice present plus two very fast and perpetually moving little people belonging to Sarah and Matt, which makes them Norma’s great grandchildren. Representing the Howdy Marshall family branch were our two eldest sons, me, one daughter-in-law and her father. None of my grandchildren were currently in town. (That’s surely more than you cared to know and will not be on the test.) The conversation eventually worked around to my blog, who knew about it, who read it, etc. My second eldest queried me. “Nearly Ninety, that won’t work much longer, what then?” Challenged, to my own surprise, I cheerily answered, “Newly Ninety!” and saw to my pleasure a flicker of surprise and an amused approval of my ready answer.

I am chagrinned to report that NEWLY will not supplant Nearly as advertised for technical and economic reasons. It’s today’s title, however, and if you are clever you can say Nearly so it sounds as if you said Newly. But we will now have to consider Nearly as meaning “just past” as well as“almost”. I am reminded of when Ted Brophy, in one of his son-ly efforts to keep a grip on things for his mother who lived alone, found his mother’s birth certificate. To his surprise, although she claimed to be 98, it showed her to be 99 with the hundredth birthday only a month or two ahead. When Ted told her this, she was furious.“Don’t you dare mention this to a soul.  I’ve a perfect right to lie about my age if I want to!” And here I am, the bragging opposite insisting on every second lived because I am so stunned still to be with you happily but messily as usual. I’m the only product of my greater gene pool who has managed this longevity trick.  Maybe I’m just a slow learner and have yet to discover what God hopes and intends for me to do with my life.  

Looking back on birthdays, I remember a succession of happily unremarkable ones. My beloved Boston terrier, Cinderella died of a heart attack during my 13^th all girl birthday dinner but I didn’t learn until the next morning that Dr Clinton, the people doctor who had delivered my brother and sister, responding to Mother’s call of desperation had delivered a shot of Daddy’s best bourbon down Cinder’s throat.  She had enjoyed it hugely, licked all hands near her and peacefully slept her way into eternity. In later years, if one is married with children, particularly young ones, one’s birthday is a family event. At least that’s how we played it so if a NYC night out with dinner and a show was the celebration it was either a carefully selected extravaganza for seven or a pre or post birthday outing for two. 

In the hope of inspiring better report cards, Howdy dreamed up a bribery scheme that worked wonders with our sons, was not really needed for our daughters but was a lovely family custom for father/child outings. For each A on a report card, the scholar could earn a $10 bill or choose instead to go for a single private date in the city for dinner and a Broadway show of their choice. A variation on this was a rite of passage at about age 13 or 14. Howdy would take the young teenager to the city for training at getting around safely in the Big Apple. The City Intro Program, on a Saturday, included lunch and perhaps one sightseeing destination. These were wonderful celebratory bonding experiences.

There was one sticky downside to the JHM Grade Enhancing Experiment which I was slow to recognize and which eventually cost Howdy dearly. Howdy and one child after another saw all the latest musicals. I saw none. Howdy’s mother tended to plan three months ahead for holidays, trapping us into poor planning. Perhaps in revolt against this, Howdy often thought Monday before a Wednesday birthday time enough to ask what I wanted. This made my demand to see Cats or Chorus Line or Hair about as expensive as possible as scalpers were needed to get two “really good seats” for just a day or two hence.  You can imagine my sympathetic response when Howdy would moan, “Oh, God, again? I’ve already seen Jesus Christ Superstar three times!” 

In citing Howdy’s often last minute birthday planning, when he planned ahead, I had outstanding presents! For my 60^th birthday, he asked Julia to pump me for ideas on a car trip we were doing together. I had just received a Fortunoffs Jewelry catalogue and blithely listed 3 items, each in the $200 range saying any one would be wonderful. He gave me all three! When Julia was living on Miami Beach and Howdy and I were visiting, we all went up to Palm Beach for lunch at the Breakers and to get the feel of Palm Beach. On our way to lunch by the Pool, through a lower lobby lined with elegant shops, I hung behind to admire the goodies in an antique jewelry shop    window. My daughter and Howdy turned back to retrieve me. “What on earth are you doing?” my naïve husband asked. (We had been married only 29 years snd he knew about my love of jewelry shops before we married.) “Picking out my birthday present,” I replied having just spotted something wonderful. We went into the store, asked to see the piece which I really coveted and learned the cost, Howdy thanked the proprietor and, outside the store, said he was “very sorry because it was truly lovely but“ that even for a significant birthday, he couldn’t afford it. We had lunch, life went on and it was in a large brown cardboard box, the outside wrapped in birthday paper with just the little brown jeweler’s box inside with a note saying. “This is also an early installment of your Christmas present from me. Love from Santa Claus.”

The gorgeous little gold pin with tiny rubies and turquoise all over its’ shell is still cherished, one of my best presents ever. Howdy’s other great bought in advance birthday present is well loved and more often worn. Sharing that story reveals my sneaky streak. Howdy and I were in Copenhagen in April,1992, part of my 70^th birthday gift to Howdy, a trip to Paris. (This was a stunningly different present from most I gave him, a once in a lifetime splurge. Glad we had it as he didn’t make it to 75.) One of us had insisted on visiting Georg Jensen and was now studying a pair of silver earrings with a touch of gold and with most of the silver sort of pewterish and some of it oxidized almost black. I told Howdy I was going in to price the earrings, try them on and probably buy them if the price was right. I could see that they would be my “go to” silver earrings. Praise the Lord, they were quite affordable. “I’ll take them!” I said gleefully. “No, I will” said Howdy shoving his credit card and the earrings at the clerk. “Howdy, I want to get them myself so I can wear them now” I explained.  “Well, you can’t” the stubborn ox said. “They’re for your birthday!” 

This may have been the only really mean thing my husband ever did to me. I was going out a few months later to an important daytime affair and was wearing  an outfit that needed the earrings. I found the little Jensen box with ease in Howdy’s chest of drawers under a pile of pajamas, left the box, wore the earrings and returned them before Howdy came home.  This worked very nicely and so I wore them by day whenever I wanted to. My birthday arrived, Howdy gave me a CD I wanted and a couple of novels I had expressed interest in and looked at me with a worried face.“I have the damnedest feeling I bought you something special months ago but I can’t remember what,” he confessed. I assured him he had. “What? When? Where? Oh, my God, the Jensen earrings. Do you have them?” “Who, me?” I said.”I don’t have them, you said they were for my birthday.” He ran upstairs, I heard drawers being opened and slammed shut and down he came, beaming broadly. Stretching out the unwrapped Jensen box, “Happy birthday, darling,“ he said. “Put them on. You can wear them now.” And I did and we lived happily ever after but he was a very smart man with a suspicious streak. I confessed all – well about the earrings, anyway – and he laughed. Newly Ninety, wow! See you soon?   p