Going over the hill with my pump

My husband gave me a pump for my 40th birthday.
Seriously.
I am now the proud owner of a green, shallow-well pump. (No, I don’t know the horsepower, etc.)
At first, I thought he had just used a pump box, so I tore into the package expecting something else, but... It really was a pump.
Confused, I smiled and told him “thank you.”
“What is it?!” demanded our 9-year-old Ellen.
John informed her.
Then, our 11-year-old Anna, “Why’d you get her a pump?”
I was thinking the same darn thing.
But, after some explanation from John, it all made sense.
The “boring” gift now actually tops the list of the best birthday gifts I’ve ever received. (I feel so old.)
John’s plan was to use the pump to bring lake water up to my garden.
For weeks, I’ve been hauling big buckets of water from the lake to my garden. (By using lake water on my plants, I don’t seem to need to add fertilizer.) It’s a lot of work!
So, I do love my new pump.
I couldn’t stop smiling this morning when I looked out and saw the timer-run garden sprinkler that spouts nutrient-rich lake water on my tomato, pea, pepper, bean, melon, and squash plants.
To add another feather to John’s cap, he also managed to fix multiple things around the house in the midst of the “pump project.”
One task included granting us access to the laundry room, once again. An uneven load must have caused the washing machine to move, and it moved in front of the laundry room door, blocking the door from opening no more than a half an inch. Of course, the door’s hinges are on the inside and there’s no other access to the room. Even the room’s small (accessible only by crawling out a window and creeping over our porch roof) was locked.
It wasn’t a good situation. I pictured us having to cut down the door or a hole through an adjoining wall to gain access. However, John didn’t fret. He calmly went to the garage, grabbed a crowbar and some pieces of wood, and returned to the laundry room door (which I was still trying to jiggle, wiggle, and push open).
Somehow John used the crowbar as a lever and the wood for leverage and was able to shift the washing machine over just enough to get the door opened. I was so impressed!
The man may have multiple engineering patents, but that simple act of him opening our laundry door topped everything. He was there when I needed him, and he calmly solved what I thought was an impossible situation.
Later that day, he fixed Ellen’s tablet. He also built a makeshift incubator for a poultry egg, reattached some shakes on the front of the house that came loose, solved an issue I was having with the outside hose, and helped Anna roundup the right batteries for her camping lantern.
I know Father’s Day has passed, but I feel the need to give my loving husband some good press after last weekend (since I tend to give him a hard time most days).
While we don’t always tell him, the girls and I appreciate John every day. He’s a dedicated and hardworking husband and father, who is the first person we—along with our friends and family members—call when something needs fixing. He’s a mechanic extraordinaire, the ultimate dad-joke teller, and our rock.
Even though he has a track record of giving some misaligned gifts--hair dryers and vacuums for example (things he might never live down)—his heart has always been in the right place. He’s a practical gift giver. He’s a quiet doer of things who rarely gets recognized for his priceless role in our family.
Thank you for my pump, John. You never cease to amaze me.
I wouldn’t want to be going “over the hill” with anyone else by my side.