Second Wedding Anniversary: Celebration of Joy and Tears and a Naughty Little Cat...

by Martha
(Virginia, USA)

I can still remember our second wedding anniversary. We were still in the broke, newlywed state. We lived in a older apartment that was up two very narrow flights of stairs in a not so great neighborhood. Typical newly wed digs I would suppose, but we (in that newly wed haze) thought it was wonderful and homely and our own little love nest.

We had a non existent budget but I had to have a wonderful anniversary gift "for him," my husband of two years. Our anniversary is in December, two weeks before Christmas. We were still in the north (New York State right in the snow belt, we got driving inter storms off the lakes, those wonderful cold, blustery, lake effect winter storms).

So I decided the ideal gift would be a nice warm scarf to keep his neck warm as he walked to work every morning and home every night. We did not own a car in those lean years. In the summer we used bicycles mainly, but in the winter ice and snow made this impossible, so we usually walked every where.

Cabs were rare and expensive in the small town we lived in. So I bought 2 skeins of soft cotton yarn in a manly shade of blue tweedy looking yarn, the variegated type. And I proceed to busily knit him a scarf. I made it long and wide and added a generous amount of fringe. This took me weeks and weeks to do. I kept it hidden in a bag hidden in the back of the closet. I was very careful to not leave any pieces of that yarn, not a single fluff, about our tines apartment.

Of course, our cat thought that this particular project should possibly make a wonderful cat toy and was determined to make its presence knows. I gave the cat little balls of other left over yarns, bottle caps, toilet tissue rolls, toilet tissue tolls with bits of yarn attached.

So the day before the our second wedding anniversary, I finished this lovely soft, well fringed, snuggley, large man sized scarf in this beautiful soft variegated yarn, colors that blended with my husbands well worn winter jacket and gloves and hat....none of which were the same shade of blue, but which were made to do. The cat had appeared to move on to other things.

In celebrations of our 2nd wedding anniversary (and probably knowing we could not afford anything like this) his parents invited us out to a nice local restaurant for dinner in celebration. I placed the scarf in a paper bag I had decorated, taping it shut and placing it up on the shelf in our closet. A cat safe location, in my mind.

So we go and have a wonderful dinner with his parents and he hands me a delicate necklace. It was costume jewelry, but was a pretty dainty little heart. I felt bad as I had left his gift at home. He told me I had given him the best gift when I married him and stayed with him this long. So after dinner we walk home, hand in hand. A light snow begins to fall and the wind gusts.

Seeing him gather his jacket closer and put up the collar I KNEW this scarf was the ideal gift and would keep him a wee bit warmer when he walked every day.

We walk up the two flights of stairs, he unlocks the door to our little apartment and flips on the kitchen light. Here is what looks like brown and colored confetti...my husband begins chuckling at what he thinks is my cute surprise... he thinks this is my idea of pretty confetti. I think I have an idea what it is...

We walk to the living room area (which is actually other side of the room) and here sits the cat playing with a pretty multi blue yarn and dragging the remains of the scarf I had knit. I immediately burst into tears. My husband was torn between laughter and sympathy. The cat was very pleased with HIS new toy!!!!

In the end my husband convinces me it can be salvaged and it was, I had to re-knit a section, it wasn't quite so wide and the fringe was not so plentiful. But my husband did happily wear his anniversary gift for several years. Not to long ago I found it tucked in the back of his drawer, still treasured after 27 years.