A Decade

Ten years ago today I left Texas and moved back to Kansas to be a Greenwood County girl for the rest of my life.  I remember leaving College Station and I began to get a bit teary eyed.  Wesley glanced over at me and instantly got mad.

"Nope.  Not gonna have it.  I just spent two years on the phone with you every night, listening to you bitch about how much you wanted to leave.  You're not gonna cry now."

Although I was taken aback, I knew he was right.  I was done with Texas.

When I moved here we lived in a house we now affectionately refer to as the 'snake house', although that's another story for another day.  Wesley was the quintessential bachelor and thus had NOTHING in this house besides his clothes.  No food, no cleaning supplies, nothing.

The next morning I drove to the nearest Walmart 45 minutes away from our little house in the hills armed with a shopping list a mile long and his checkbook.  I filled that shopping cart to the gills with all the essentials for our new life as we played house.  Food, cleaning supplies, toiletries and the like.  Every item on my list was something I would consider 'essential'.

On the drive back home I kept noticing the ditches were filled with the most beautiful orange lilies.  I pulled that old chevy feed pickup over and picked a huge bouquet that I then balanced precariously on the mountain of supplies I'd stacked in the passenger seat of the single cab pickup.

Upon returning to the house I worked feverishly to create some semblance of a home.  Cleaning was towards the top of the list - especially the kitchen.  I found a mason jar in a cabinet, arranged the ditch lilies and placed them front and center in the middle of the kitchen table.

It was official.  I was the perfect housewife.  Wes would come home, see his beautifully clean house, eat a gourmet meal courtesy of Hamburger Helper and undoubtedly ooh and aaahhh over the flowers that I'd so lovingly picked for him.  This day was perfect start to our perfect little life.  Everything was PERFECT, I tell ya.

I made supper and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And nearly two hours after he'd said, he finally walked through the door.  Now, I was no stranger to this lifestyle having grown up in a ranching family, but I was always the one WITH my dad... not the one waiting on him.  Turns out, it is terribly frustrating.  Who knew?

When he walked through the door I was a bit disappointed that he didn't scan the room to notice how much time and effort I'd put into cleaning and arranging things nicely.  He walked into the kitchen, grabbed the store receipt off the counter and his eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw the total.

"$323???  WHAT IN THE WORLD DID YOU BUY?!"

It was then that he started to scan the room, trying to find the gold plated accessories I surely must have purchased that might justify such an expense.  It was then that he noticed the ditch lilies.  The lilies that I lovingly picked and arranged.  The lilies that were supposed to serve as icing on the cake; the cherry on top; the crowning jewel of my master homemaking skills.  This was supposed to be the beginning of our most perfect little life together and instead things were headed downhill rather quickly.

I remember him shooting daggers as he stared at the bouquet.  "How much did THOSE cost?"

***

Things are a bit different these days.  I don't drive a feed pickup as often anymore.  The perfect housewife/perfect life thing went out the window loooong ago.  I can cook more than Hamburger Helper these days, but the kids enjoy it so it's not totally off the menu.  Now, every time I drive down the road in early summer and see the familiar orange lilies lining the ditches I get nostalgic.  We get a laugh and still tease each other every time the kids or I pick a bouquet of wildflowers and I make a pretty arrangement for the kitchen table.  "How much did THOSE cost?"