Looking Forward to Daybreak

I saw Betty Ann Bender yesterday morning and she was fit to be tied. Her husband had left the house without mentioning their anniversary. And it wasn’t just any anniversary. It was their tenth. Betty Ann said she wasn’t really expecting diamonds and roses as Sam has never been the romantic kind, but she was hoping he would at least remember. He didn’t.

I asked Betty Ann if she had wished him a Happy Anniversary. “Absolutely, not,” she said. “I’m flat out tired of being the bigger person. I’ve reminded him every single year since we were married. If I mean anything at all to him, he could prove it by remembering our anniversary by himself, just once.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that. I thought about calling Sam and giving him a heads-up, but I decided it was none of my business. Maybe I should have. I talked to Betty Ann later that same evening and she was even angrier, if that’s possible. Sam had come in, enjoyed the fine elegant meal she cooked for him and played with the kids—all without a single word about their anniversary. As we talked he was singing in the shower.

“I don’t even think he realizes I’m giving him the silent treatment,” Betty Ann fumed.

I knew I was on thin ice when Betty Ann asked me if I tried to live by that commandment in the Bible not to let the sun go down on our wrath but I had to tell her that, yes, I thought it was very important that married couples not go to bed angry.

“Fine,” Betty Ann said. “I’ll forgive him tonight, but if I don’t die before I wake, he’d better look out in the morning.”

~Shellie