my husband made me cry in the driveway

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It started out a normal morning.

It was Monday, the first day back to work after a week of vacation. The alarm clock rang far too early. We were tired. How can you be tired after a week of relaxing on a houseboat? I don't know, but we were.

We fell back into our routine as soon as our feet hit the floor. Dogs outside, start coffee, shower, dress, breakfast, goodbye kiss, out the door.

Everything seemed normal.

He went to his car while I found my abandoned work laptop. I walked to the garage, threw in the laptop and my purse. I went to the deep freeze to pull out something for dinner and noticed his car was still in the driveway. Then something unexpected happened.

My fool husband blew the car horn at me.

"What the...?!?"

I jumped three feet in the air and nearly dropped the freezer door on my head.

My first thought was that my husband had lost his dang mind.

My second thought was of the first time a man blew a car horn at me in a driveway

I was an awkward teenager waiting to be picked up for a date. When D arrived, he chose to blow the car horn rather than come to the door.

As I raced to the front door I heard a deep voice ask, "Where do you think you're going?"

"D is waiting on me," I stammered. Then I ground to a halt in the foyer, my father's imposing frame standing between me and the door.

Dad crossed his arms. "That boy better be delivering something, because he sure isn't picking anything up."

"But Daaaaadddd....!" I pleaded desperately.

I didn't date much. D was one of the few boys at school who seemed interested in me. I was afraid if I didn't walk out to the car, he would back out of the driveway and leave me, alone and dateless on a Saturday night.

I cried at the thought.

"If that young man cares about you, he'll get his scrawny tail out of that pitiful excuse for a car and come to the front door like a gentleman. If he doesn't, good riddance. My daughter is not someone to be honked at."

I huffed and waited. Then the doorbell rang. Dad answered. He and D had a little chat. I was allowed to go on the date and that little incident never occurred again.

When my husband honked the horn at me, all of this ran through my head in a split second. But he wasn't some thoughtless teenager. This was the man I've been married to for over 20 years, a man with excellent manners, a man who opens doors and still calls me his bride.

Was he so tired he'd lost his mind?

I walked to the car to find out, prepared to give him a piece of my mind to replace the one he'd so obviously misplaced.

I looked through the driver side window. His lips were moving. Probably having a work conversation, I assumed. Probably needs me to get something for him.

He rolled down the window. I waited to see what he had to say for himself.

"Eyes like fire in the night. Bridges burning with their light...."

What?

"Now I'll have to spend the whole night through. And honey, yes, I'd like to spend it all on you..."

My prepared soliloquy about how I almost dropped the freezer door on my head because of the car horn was interrupted by the jazz strains of Boz Scaggs coming through the window.

I stopped talking and started listening.

My husband threw back his head and sang with abandon:

"Love! look what you've done to me! Never thought I'd fall again so easily.
Oh, love, you wouldn't lie to me, Leading me to feel this way!"

I started crying and my face turned red. But not because of the blaring car horn or my near decapitation by freezer.

I was crying because my husband is fool all right. A sentimental fool.

He didn't care what the neighbors thought. He didn't care that he was sitting in a driveway in the middle of suburbia. He didn't care that he was listening to Boz Scaggs in a minivan.

His honk was a call of love, a prelude to a song.

I also didn't care that I was crying while standing in my bare feet on our suburban driveway on a normal Monday morning.

"Normal" for us has always been anything but. And our kind of normal has kept the passion alive since 1991.

I leaned through the window to kiss him. I leaned close to his ear.

"You know I have to blog about this, right?" I whispered.

He rolled his eyes as he backed out of the driveway. And he grinned.

In spite of his honking ways, I know my dad would approve.