Chris Through the Years

Chis turns 42 tomorrow, so let's tell some stories...

Tuesday is Chris Brown’s 42nd birthday.

I know, Chris Brown! We can’t believe it either!

In honor of Chris’ birthday, today I’m sharing stories of Chris through the decades that we’ve been together.

WHEN HE WAS A TEENAGER, Chris and his friends got together every 4th of July to shoot off fireworks. Usually, we shot them off his granddad’s dock out over the water (and sometimes over the water and into the dock of the neighbors next door which would start epic firework battles back and forth across the docks). But sometimes, we shot them in Chris’s backyard. He lived out in the middle of a protected live oak preserve in our hometown, so his house was surrounded by federally protected woods.

Not ideal for fireworks.

One year, Chris and his friends started a bottle rocket battle in his backyard. Bottle rockets whizzed by and every so often, you’d hear someone yell out that they’d been hit. Everyone would laugh and cheer, and the battle would resume. But it had been a particularly dry summer that year, and without anyone noticing, someone lit the grass in Chris’s backyard on fire. Panic ensued for a little bit when they finally noticed the fire getting bigger. Thankfully, they were able to put the grass out before it got too close to the woods. But Chris’ dad was not happy when he found a giant circle of burnt grass in his yard the next morning….

IN HIS 20’s, Chris finished grad school and got a job working in Yonkers, NY at a scene shop for Broadway. We lived in Connecticut about halfway between New York and New Haven, CT, where I worked. Our first fall in our first house, Chris really struggled with the fall leaves situation.

We had a huge yard and a few really big trees that seemed to drop gallons of leaves (do we measure leaves by gallons?) all over our yard from September until December. He was able to use a leaf blower to get all the leaves into piles that he could then shovel into leaf bags, but there was one section of our yard that had hedges all down the side next to the road. This section of the year was always getting leaves caught in those hedges and it made it really difficult to rake and clean up that part of the yard.

Finally, one afternoon he had enough and he took his chainsaw out there and cut down every single hedge. Now he would be able to blow the leafs across the yard and into a pile that he could bag. Problem solved.

The next morning, we woke up to find our yard had hardly any leaves at all. It was an autumnal miracle! There were no leaves in our grass at all! But when we walked outside, we got the stink eye from our next door neighbor who was raking and bagging all of our leaves that had now blown completely over our yard and into his yard. I was mortified! But Chris went back inside the house and lit a fire in the fireplace.

“Aren’t you going to go do something? Help him rake or something?” I asked.

“Why?” he said, snuggling down on the couch in front of the fire looking pretty happy with himself. “The leaves aren’t in my yard.”

IN HIS 30s, we had moved to Florida and bought our second house here in Orlando. In 2018, we had a big hurricane come through and it really made a mess of our neighborhood. We had a lot of debris, but nothing major. Unlike a lot of our neighbors who had trees and limbs down across their properties.

Like most Floridians, the minute the storm passed and it was safe to come out of our homes, we all started cleaning up. It was hot and no one had power, so no AC. It was so humid and it continued to rain off and on for another day or two. It was just gross.

Chris cleaned up our property first and then without stopping, he just moved over to the neighbor’s yard and started cleaning up theirs, too. When he got to a house that had a tree down, he went back to our garage and brought out his old faithful chainsaw and helped cut up the bigger limbs for the neighbors. And down the street he and Michael went without making a big deal out of anything. Just keeping his head down and helping take care of our neighbors.

IN HIS 40s, Chris started gardening. He built some raised flower beds in our backyard and grew cucumbers, squash, pineapples, peppers, green beans, satsumas, and more. But his favorite thing he grew were flowers. He planted them throughout his garden to encourage pollination by attracting bees and butterflies, but eventually, he let the flowers take over all of his other beds and now almost half of our yard is full of beautiful flowers most of the year.

Every few days, he goes out to his garden and cuts a big, beautiful bouquet for me. He brings them inside and puts them in a vase and then sits them next to my side of the bed on my nightstand. He never tells me when he does it. I just walk into our bedroom and find a sweet little surprise.

This year when he was planning his garden, I asked him what he was thinking about planting. “Flowers, of course!” he said proudly, winking at me. “I have to grow them so I can give them to my girlfriend.”

What a joy it has been to see Chris grow up. To see the beautiful flowers of the seeds he planted so long ago flourish and thrive.

Happy birthday to the backbone of our family and the center of my entire world. I love growing up with you. xoxo