"The Best Birthday Present Ever"

It doesn't take an awful lot to bring a human being to tears--tears of pain and agony, or of pure unadulterated joy.  It is, however, lots of fun to plan and do something that brings tears of love and joy to another person.  The satisfaction that can be derived from watching a face transformed into a quivering mass of happiness is pretty much unparalleled among all of the human experiences.  And one day in 2008, Liz and I had the opportunity to deliver the "best birthday present ever" to our son's wife, Val. 

Poor Valerie had voluntarily moved to Vermont after marrying our son, who was there to help Liz and me to run the (ill-fated) inn.  She had agreed to forgo her beloved Texas for an unspecified period, and that meant also not having any personal contact with her friends and relatives for what eventually became two and a half years in the mountains selling kitchen tiles and shovelling snow.  For this, Liz and I love Val (among other reasons too numerous to list...but this one is right up there).

In any event, our little plan began on that cold snowy November day in 2009.  If you have to ask how I  know that it was cold and snowy, I ask you simply to look at a map of where Vermont is located.  Matt had stopped by the house and we were discussing a birthday present for Val, who would be celebrating the passage of yet another year away from home in mid-December.  In the midst of a discussion about how much Val missed Texas, we started with an idea that we could fly her down there for a few days to give her a respite, however brief, from the Relentless New England Winter (always capitalized since it is a force of nature onto itself).  Only problem was Val's less than accommodating work schedule/boss.  But then, it occurred that maybe we could bring a little of Texas to Val in the form of one of her friends.

Val's best friend, Lauren, had grown up with our kids and we knew her and her parents very well.  Although I may qualify as an official "geezer," I am not without my technological skills and I quickly was able to acquire Lauren's cellphone number using an advanced social networking technique of which I had become aware--I called my daughter Katie, who was also a friend of Lauren's and I asked her for the number.  In any case, I called Lauren and quickly explained the purpose of my call. There's apparently a very fine line between "friend's father" and "creepy stalking old bastard" and a mid-20's girl is not wont to make fine distinctions. 

"Hi Lauren, this is Katie Lavalley's dad?" I said, quite tentatively.

"Yeeeesssss....," she replied, dragging it out quite a bit longer than I would've thought would be necessary. 

I didn't want to lose her at this critical point with a phone call that would at some future time be described as either a) a creepathon; or b) a really cool idea.  No man wants to be dropped into the "creepiest people I know" bucket along with the guy who stalks the girls in the library, or the older man who thinks that his daughter's friends really want him hanging around the pool while they sunbathe.  So I plunged onward, ever courageous!

"Ummm...I wanted to know if you'd like to be Valerie's birthday present?"

"Huh?"

The modern translation of "huh?" can encompass several meanings, but the most common is "What in hell is this moron saying???"  I'm not sure Lauren had that exact thought, but it sure felt like it.  In any case, I proceeded to explain the plan that Liz and I had concocted.   We wanted to fly Lauren up to Albany, New York on Val's birthday (a Friday, concidentally), where I would pick her up and deliver her to the inn in Manchester.  We would put her up in a suite and she would make a casual appearance at the bar that night where we would all spring the birthday surprise on helpless, lonely little Valerie and they would have a weekend together.

Some plans don't survive first contact with the enemy.  This one was a champ of a plan and we were all confident it would do just fine. And it even outdid itself.

Valerie's routine was to work at the tile store until about 6:00 pm and then to come over to the inn where the kitchen crew would prepare her a dinner and she and the chef's wife would function as the "drinks research team" for the inn.  On that Friday, I drove to Albany and picked up Lauren without a hitch, and then delivered her to the inn where she unpacked and got cleaned up after the trip.  Lauren then came down to the bar where she sat two chairs down our small tavern bar from "Valerie's chair" and waited along with Matt and me. 

Mid-December in Manchester is not a particularly busy time and we were easily able to hear Val coming in the front door.  Every night, it was Matt's routine to greet Val with a hug and walk with her into the bar where she would sit down in her special chair and start relaxing from her day.  This time I went with Matt and we both stood behind Val waiting for a reaction to having her best friend five feet to her right (there was nobody else at the bar). 

But no reaction.  Not a thing.  Because she had not seen Lauren sitting there.  But she did know that there was something going on because she was in the middle of the sentence "What's going on with you two?" as she turned and spotted Lauren sitting there smiling at her.

It's that moment.  The tears, the disbelief, the hysterical laughter, the simple damned downright unmitigated, unfettered, joy of that moment.  It's that moment when the happiest thing you can imagine is that you are standing right where you're standing, doing just what you're doing.