How I won the Husband Jackpot…

It all started in the summer of 1982. I had just graduated from high school and was looking forward to new adventures in the college world in a few months. I had been seeing someone most of my senior year of high school, and we were still dating, although no longer exclusively. He was a nice guy, but we were not well suited for one another. A longtime friend of mine from elementary school, Gary, was working with Jeff, aka Sweet Pea, at Winn-Dixie and suggested to Jeff that he might ask me out. And he did. And the rest is history.

Well, sort of.

I should give a bit of background at this point. Jeff and I were 2 years apart in high school and, while we didn’t really know each other, we knew each other’s faces and were aware of each other’s existence. I actually worked up the courage to ask him to the Y-Teen Formal (Y-Teens was an all-girl club at school and the formal was a girl-ask-guy affair, like Sadie Hawkins dances. He already had a date. I was mortified. I never spoke to him again until he called to ask me out on our first date.) For this reason I call Gary’s fix-up of us not a blind date, but a “nearsighted” one.

I remember our first date vividly. He took me to see “Tron” at the theater and when he took me home, I invited him in for a glass of tea so we could talk some more. He stayed a long time…a REALLY long time. We talked and drank tea and he kissed me goodnight and it was a perfectly lovely evening, one that I hoped would repeat itself many, many times. And it did.

Our courtship was not without its rough patches, and our marriage has had a few of those as well.  Relationships involve flawed people and, as such, are subject to those people’s foibles and mistakes.  I will admit in writing, for all the world to see, that most of the foibles in our relationship have been mine.  He knew I was crazy going into this shootin’ match.

He was born on December 5, 1961.  Mom Cutshaw always said that it took her 16 years of marriage to have 3 children, and it did.  Mom and Pop Cutshaw were married in November, 1945, eloping when he came back from the war.  In June 1950, Jeff’s brother Howard was born, followed by Bridget in January 1955.  Mom Cutshaw joked that she “watched 1960 really close!” , but alas, Jeff came along in December of 1961.  (He graduated from kindergarten as Howard was graduating from high school.)  Mom Cutshaw told me that she knew the morning after they conceived him that they’d made a baby.  I for one am eternally grateful that they did!

Among all the other reasons that Sweet Pea is special, the most important to me is that after all these years together, he can still make me laugh.  He is, in fact, the funniest person I’ve ever known in my life.  And considering some of the characters in my family, that is indeed saying something!

He is also generous and tenderhearted.  I’ll never forget the times he has come home after a holiday shopping trip with misty eyes because of some child’s heartbreaking Angel Tree request for warm socks or a winter coat.  I have never been more proud of him than when he learned how to give injections to Mom Cutshaw as she battled cancer.  He is a sweet, decent, caring man, one who married into my family and loved them like his own.  And they loved him just as much, Mama most of all.  It was Mama, in fact, who gently pointed out to me that with Jeff, I seemed to laugh a lot.  I think she knew I would marry him long before I knew it.

We’ve had a wonderful life together so far, with the good times more than balancing the bad ones.  And now with his birthday once again approaching, I just wanted to take a moment to share why he is so wonderful, why I love him so much, and to say that I am forever grateful for having won the Husband Jackpot when I married him.

And as I have shared in other places, I have to share my favorite picture of us together, lovingly captured by Howard a number of years ago.  The looks on both of our faces pretty much express the totality of our life together.

Happiest of Happy Birthdays, my precious Sweet Pea!  It may be your birthday, but I am the one who receives the gift.  Thank you for giving me a life I could never have imagined without you.  I love you with all my heart, for all my life.  ❤