A Special Present

Moe's birthday is the day before Valentines Day . He used to remember Valentines Day every year by giving the kids and I a box of candy each , sometimes flowers or something personal for me. Many times we would go out for dinner and dancing . It was all very romantic and it also served to redeem his lack of memory when it came to anniversary's , birthdays ,holidays , and other special days . I would tease him and say he only remembered it because it came the day AFTER his birthday . He would smile his " I am a devil and you love it " smile never denying the charges .

That was when we lived in the States . We moved back to Libya in 1990 . The dances and dinners no longer where celebrated by outings to restaurants or clubs . We cooked dinners at home and danced around in the living room to the radio/ cassette player we managed to "borrow" from my brother in law . There were no clubs and restaurant's were so exorbitantly over priced we never thought about going out . Candy was a faint memory as it was on the embargo list for some weird reason known only to governments . If you did find candy back in the 1990's it was usually way over priced and well beyond it's pass due date, not something affordable for a family of 6, nor desirable either .

Then as the sanctions were lightened up here and consumer goods were allowed to enter the country things became available to some degree , but still too expensive . About that time my husband became ill and was unable to work because of his heart .I worked and my lovely daughters worked . We got by , things looked up .

Slowly but surely we started to rebuild our lives after we lost our home here in Tripoli to a new road that was being built . They came to knock down our house one day , wanted us to move out of a 3,ooo sq, ft. house with 5 bedrooms , 2 living rooms , 2 large entry rooms , a huge kitchen , with a dinning room , 2 baths , and 3 storage rooms , into a 2 bedroom apartment in 2 days ! Just imagine ! Somehow and not without a lot of hard work on my daughters part , did we manage to do this .

Then my husband had a major stroke . We thought he would die . It took many months of long hard hours of rehabilitating physiotherapy for Moe to return to some normalcy . He had a second stroke 2 years later . He again had to re-enter the world of physiotherapy because this time he had been partly paralyzed on the right side. His memory never returned to what it used to be , although he has continued to make great strides towards improvement even now . So forgotten birthdays , anniversary's , and Valentines Days are the norm , never given any special thought .This year he remembered Valentines Day all on his own . He came to me and said he had a present for me . He gave me a big kiss , he said it was to celebrate Valentines Day . The loveliest kiss I ever had ,the best present of all !