Each December, my husband hefts a fir-tree over his left shoulder and carries it home. The last two Yuletides it has been wet and miserable, sideways wind and rain, yet he has done it anyway. We live in an area that offers free delivery of the Douglas Fir or Norwegian Spruce of your choice, yet he declines. My husband doesn’t dress in ratty clothes and play burly lumberjack for an afternoon to prove anything to himself. He is not the type of man who needs to chop or hunt or drag things back to his lair in order to reaffirm his masculinity. He carries the tree for one reason, and one reason only.

Me.

He does it because he knows it reminds me of when we met, when he was a young flower vendor who stood in the cold and sold birds of paradise to well-heeled ladies and high-heeled girls on the…