With all the serious consequences
and worries over the current Covid-19 pandemic, I thought maybe I should post
some light reading just for the sake of enjoyment. So I am going to start posting the individual
chapters from my book, “Honey Signed The Waiver”. It is a compilation of true stories, mostly
humorous, about my life with my husband, Bryon.
I hope you enjoy reading them.
THE BEST THING
I keep telling Honey he is the best
thing that ever happened to me. But it
took a while for him to convince me that was true. We met at a New Year’s Eve party where my teenage
son had asked his girlfriend’s parents to introduce me to some single men. I was divorced and had been a single parent
for ten years. My son felt it was time
there was another man in my life since he’d be leaving for the military upon
graduation from high school. Honey was
one of those single men invited and the first one to arrive at the party.
I think he’d been working that day
because his hair was sculpted in a bowl shape from wearing a hard hat, and he
was wearing a shirt and tie with his blue jeans. He asked me to dance and then we sat and
chatted. His name was Bryon, not
Byron. He was a mechanical engineer and
he told me funny stories from work that made me laugh. That was promising.
Feeling out of place in a crowd of
people I really didn’t know, I left soon after midnight . My father
had died Christmas Eve, my mother was alone, my daughter was going to move in
with her father, and my son and I were going to move in with my mother. Life was in turmoil and I wasn’t looking for
any romantic involvement. I had too much
to do.
A week later Honey phoned me. He didn’t ask me for a date, though. He said, “I understand you’re moving
soon. Would you like some help? I have a big truck.”
So he came and helped. We moved furniture. We painted the inside of the townhouse I was
leaving. After six weeks of working
together evenings and weekends, he asked me for a date. He’d been counseled by my son’s girlfriend’s
parents to take me out to dinner and a movie.
By then I was living at my mother’s house in Abbotsford. Honey had only been there once before,
arriving from another direction when we moved my furniture.
I gave him the address and told him,
“Come east on the freeway from Langley.
Take the Mt. Lehman exit, then the first right on the north side of the
freeway. Then follow Old Yale Road to
Townline Road. Turn right. Then the first left. Mom’s house is straight ahead and you’ll see
my car in the driveway.”
He said he’d pick me up at 6:30 . I was still waiting at 6:45 , and at 7:00 . Punctuality
is a priority for me. I was having
flashbacks to a failed marriage where an errant husband never arrived when he
said he would and I was trying very hard not to react without first hearing
Honey’s explanation. That was good,
because he did have one.
“I took the first right, like you
said,” he told me. “But it wasn’t a
road, it was the entrance onto the freeway going back the way I’d come. And I had to go all the way to 264th
Street to get off and turn around and come back again. I left half an hour early so I wouldn’t be
late but it didn’t work out.”
Honey’s been so helpful in teaching
me to be a better writer by becoming more explicit in what I’m saying. He’s an engineer who takes instructions
literally. It’s a safety issue with
Honey.
On our next date, Honey offered to
cook dinner at his place. I knew he
lived in a house, but I hadn’t seen it yet.
He gave me the address and said, “Call me when you get close.”
“What do you mean? You want me to get off the Fraser Highway and
go find a public pay phone so I can call you?
Why?”
I thought Honey was hiding
something, maybe another woman?
“Oh, yeah. You don’t have a cell phone, do you? I forgot.
That’s okay. It was just that if
I was at the store getting groceries, I could let you know I’d be home right
away.”
It was 1994 and cell phones were not
common appendages at that time. He had
one that weighed about eight pounds, but he was the only man I knew who carried
one on his hip, like a gun in a holster.
When I finally saw inside Honey’s house, I could see he wasn’t
hiding another woman. The house was
mostly empty, three thousand square feet empty.
There was one recliner in the living room. The dining room showcased a large, heavy
wooden table and chairs and matching china cabinet. In a huge master bedroom there was only a king sized
bed. The other three bedrooms and the
downstairs rumpus room were void of any furniture. Besides fridge, stove and dishwasher, all
Honey had in the kitchen were a single pot, a broiler pan, two plates, two
mugs, brand new cutlery and several dozen Petro-Canada glasses of every shape
and size.
For a man who isn’t a cook, dinner
that night was good. Stuffed chicken
breast, baked potatoes, salad, and wine.
But alas, that was the only time Honey ever willingly cooked a whole
meal for me.
After several months of getting to
know each other, Honey was anxious to show me his beloved cabin at Green Lake
in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, a five hour drive north of where we
lived in Metro Vancouver. It was Easter
weekend and we planned a getaway. I
drove to his house where he threw my bag in the truck. He had told me it would be cold up there, the
lake would be frozen, to dress warm. I
had on a new pair of high, fleece lined winter boots and wore a heavy
coat. Honey was wearing a heavy suede
jacket, a cowboy hat and cowboy boots.
We pulled out of the driveway and only got to the end of the road when
Honey turned around.
“I forgot something,” he said.
Honey ran into the house, came back
out and on the bench seat between us he carefully placed a roll of duct tape
and a Bowie knife. I didn’t know if I
should be afraid or not. I double checked
my interior alarm system. My heart
wasn’t racing. My breathing felt
normal. My solar plexus wasn’t
contracting. My fear factor gauge
registered zero.
“What are those for?” I asked Honey,
just to double check.
“Oh, I always take the tape, the
knife and my Dremel Tool, in case of emergencies. Once I broke some ribs and used the tape to
hold me together until I got home. The
knife comes in handy if I want to whittle a twig to roast something on a
bonfire. And the Dremel can be used to
repair all sorts of things. I try to be
prepared.”
Honey is so smart. It was foolish of me to worry.
When we got to the cabin the snow
was crisp and crackled as we drove down the twisty driveway from the road. Once inside, I was flabbergasted. The cabin was fully furnished and had
everything, including dishes and pots and pans,
a toaster, a coffee maker and a microwave.
“Why do you have everything here and
nothing at home?” I asked.
“Well, I bought the cabin all
found. All this stuff came with it. Back home, the house is empty because my
former girlfriend took everything with her when she left.”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing if I
should feel sorry for Honey or just amazed at his predilection for the comforts
of urban living at the cabin and rustic privation at home.
Remembering the emptiness at Honey’s
home in Langley, and my growing need to leave my mother’s house now that she
knew she had sufficient income to support herself since my father’s death, I
realized I had furnishings that would fit perfectly into Honey’s house. So one day when Honey whispered he didn’t
want me to leave, I knew he’d finally convinced me he was the best thing that
ever happened to me.
_____________________________
From HONEY SIGNED THE WAIVER
By Lisa A. Hatton
