My husband, Beau, has the kind of name that is easily mistaken for something else. It’s a nickname given him by his Scottish grandmother, who thought that his given name was too grand for a baby. He kept the name Beau all this time, since he’s not so fond of the one on his birth certificate.
All of you reading this story probably know that beau is a French word meaning beautiful. Well, I think he’s beautiful even though he’s a lot older than I am. You could look at our age difference as 2% and slowly decreasing. The way I elect to think of it is that part of the year he’s two years older, and part of the year he’s one year older. We get along better when he’s only one year older, because we’re closer to being from the same generation. The worst was when he was 60 and I was 58 or 59. We were from different decades. I told people he was ten years older. No one dared to question me. It's not polite.
Beau is pronounced identically to bow. Oh, rats. As in bow tie, not as in the homonym of bough—which doesn’t rhyme with dough, although dough rhymes with beau.
I find amusement in many places, and one of them is in coffee shops, reading the spelling of Beau's name on the paper cup. He’s gotten Bo a lot. Bow more times than you’d think. Once, Paul. My favorite is Boe. Rhymes with toe.
His last name gets butchered, too. My sister Renie misspelled both syllables of his last name on the invitation to her wedding this year. She knows how to spell it, and ordinarily she’s not the kind to make mistakes. Must have been the stress of writing all five of those invitation envelopes.
If you've been paying attention you know she had nine guests. Well, some of them came in pairs.
As sister and maid/matron/mayfly of honor, I should by rights have helped her. But she stubbornly lives on the other side of the country, the side we grew up on. I suppose she could have mailed all those invitations and envelopes across the country, and I could have addressed and stuffed the envelopes. However, I would have made more mistakes, and she knew it. I might have put frog stamps on them, or worse. (Not intended as a reference to my new brother-in-law, who's definitely a prince.) Also lately I've started to gamify tasks. I definitely would have set a timer to see if I could complete the towering stack of invitations in under four minutes, averaging 48 seconds per stuffed and addressed envelope. Now we'll never know.
Anyway, one time Beau and I went to Vancouver (British Columbia, not Florida) for a long weekend. He was born there and lived in Vancouver for his first eighteen months. I don’t understand why he has even a vestige of a Canadian accent when his mother was Scottish and his father German and they moved to California before he spoke any words beyond da-da. But you can hear it if you listen very, very carefully.
In addition to his occasional Canadian vowels, there’s one word that Beau pronounces just like his mother, who kept a soft Scottish accent until the very end. I won’t say what it is, because I refuse to tell him. Let’s just say it’s a common word, one I hear from him almost every day. A half-second burst of delight and fun, every time I hear it. My face reveals nothing.
Please don't tell him what it is, if you notice it.
We went to Vancouver to visit his dad’s friend Hans, a man in his mid-eighties. A fellow German, Hans worked in a logging camp in the middle of Canada with Beau’s dad, Rolf, for years. Hard workers who shared a home country, Rolf and Hans became lifelong friends. The two men ended up moving to Vancouver together and choosing their respective wives from a house shared by recent transplants from the UK. Only women lived in the house, of course. This was the 1950s.
Those of you who have lost a parent might agree that you keep thinking of things you wish you’d asked them. That’s the main reason we visited Hans, to hear stories of Beau’s father.
Hans had lost his second wife a couple of years before. Hans was a man of some means, and his second wife divorced him when she figured out she’d make more money that way than by waiting for him to die, because most of his estate was going to his kids. Kids from his first wife, who'd died many years before.
Besides talking about Beau's dad and showing us albums of photos, Hans told us about the dating scene as a man in his late eighties. He said, it’s just difficult to be attracted to an eighty-year-old woman. Even a sixty-year-old, he said. Then he added, if my wife were still alive, I’d still be attracted to her. The odd thing is that he meant his second wife, the one who clearly loved his money more than his soul. He said, wistfully, she's in her seventies but I met her in her forties, when she was still beautiful.
Thank goodness I’d snagged Beau while I was young, just 57.
When we checked into our hotel in downtown Vancouver, there was a vase of flowers from Hans. The card read, Welcome to Vancouver, Mr. and Mrs. Bean.
You know Mr. Bean, right? British comedy? You also know that Bean is Beau’s first name, not his last name. A zing of delight, this time for Mrs. Bean.
I’m not going to say it was the highlight of the weekend, but it was one of them.
The other time Beau was beaned was during a hike in Water Dog, the city park near our house. We were working our way down a steep, rocky path, both looking groundward to ensure our feet were landing in well-chosen places. Older people do this, watch their feet. We were practicing for when we’re old. Beau followed close on the heels of my hiking boots as I passed under a six-inch-thick branch of an oak tree. No need for me to duck. I'm a lot shorter than Beau.
Beau was beaned, hard. Ended up with a mild concussion.
Like me, Beau was wearing a wide-brimmed hiking hat. Good for sun protection. Not good for seeing evil tree branches at the height of your forehead, when you're looking down.
Unlike my friend Lee, I didn’t angrily snap a photo of the smiting tree branch on the spot. But I went back the next day, took the photo, and sent it to the city parks and rec department with a request for them to deal with the evil branch. To increase the probability of the result we wanted, I mentioned that I didn’t want the city to be sued or anything, should a more litigious person be felled. I resisted the strong desire to title the email, Beau Was Beaned.
Two days later I hiked past the tree again. They had sawn off the tree branch and left it next to the path on time out.
Vengeance for Mr. Bean.
[Top image is the Beau beaner branch. Bottom image, a cup. Photo creds: Me.]
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