Nostalgia

My husband came up from the basement.
He had an apron on over his clothes.
Where did you get that apron? I asked him.
I’ve had it for about twenty years, he told me.

I’ve never seen it, I said emphatically.
That’s because you don’t come down to the basement while I’m working, he said.
I noticed a bit of nostalgia in his voice.
I knew what he was thinking.

Back in our college days, my husband drove a green Saab.
He bought that car, used, when he was 18 years old.
He had that car even after we were married in 1981.
It almost became his trademark.

His friends would tease him about his car.
It’s ugly, they would say.
He did not care about the appearance of his little green Saab.
It was his car; he bought it with his own money and he took care of it.

Saying he took care of his car was an understatement.
When he went to Georgia Tech, he did not bring his car with him.
He went to college with his best friend, who would one day be our best man.
That friend drove his car down to Atlanta and they shared the driving.

He worked on his little green Saab before he went to school.
He took off the tires and put the car up on cement blocks.
I never understood why he did that, though he tried to explain it to me.
Something about a car sitting still for long periods of time and the air pressure of the tires.

I knew when he began work on his car, school was approaching.
If school was approaching, then he would be driving to Atlanta.
If he was driving to Atlanta, then I would not see him until Christmas.
I grabbed every minute I could with him.

I would sit next to him as he worked on his car.
It was not something I planned to do.
It was not something that even thrilled me.
I did it simply to spend time with him.

I did not understand what he was doing.
He was studying to be an engineer.
Fixing things and building things was what he enjoyed.
I was entering his world just a bit, which he seemed to like.

When he would come home on breaks, he had to borrow the family car to come see me.
He did not take his little green Saab down from the cement blocks until summer vacation.
Sitting there with him as he worked meant the world to him.
I never knew that until years later.

After we moved from our first house, we built a house.
In those years between the two houses, we had all five of our children.
It was then that his woodworking hobby was something he could do more often.
He loved projects and he loved making things out of wood.

He has made furniture, beds, toys, a jewelry box, a doll cradle, and a tool box for our boys.
As he worked down the basement in his workshop, I was upstairs with our children.
As he worked designing and building things, I was keeping the children upstairs.
Sitting and talking to him while he worked was a distant memory.

I helped him carry things from his workshop if they were not too heavy.
I would go down and look at the progress of something he was doing if he asked me.
The simple days of pulling up a chair and just being there with him had passed.
I never noticed that it was a that was then, this is now kind of thing.

It hit my heart when my husband made the comment about his apron.
I always see him when he comes upstairs.
I always see him when he is done working.
That he even had an apron was a surprise to me.

The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down. (Proverbs 14:1)

I really had nothing to say to my husband after his remark.
His comment did not need a response.
He simply said what was true.
The memories of then were very vivid and apparently very close to the surface.

His remark and his nostalgia was not wasted on me.
I’ve been down the basement, I mentioned; I never saw that apron hanging anywhere.
I heard my words and knew that I was trying to justify myself.
His words hit my heart and made me uncomfortable.

When I sat with him all those years ago as he fixed his car, we were eighteen years old.
I sat with him before marriage, before children, before diapers, dishes, and laundry.
It made me sad that I never saw his apron.
The fact that I never saw it spoke volumes to me.

My husband is still down the basement working on a project.
I hear his woodworking equipment.
The children are grown; everyday tasks do not take up as much of my time.
Perhaps, I need to go down and pull up a chair.

For my husband.
For old times sake.
For my husband.
For making new memories together.