I contacted some lawn guys who came to the house while Jessica was at work. They dumped dirt on my dirt, which I found odd, then put down sections of grass. Watching from my kitchen window, the drab brown of our backyard was transformed, rectangle by rectangle, into a vibrant green carpet.

The problem was, it wasn't a carpet. It was grass. It rained later that day, causing mushy areas to develop until they resembled parts of the Mississippi Delta. The grass might have recovered from this. But I arranged a surprise party as well, and roughly a hundred people clomping around on it, digging into it with their heels, creating divots, and generally making a mudhole of Woodstockian proportions - that, I think, is probably not in the lawn-care manual as the preferred way to extend the life of a new lawn. I sensed that the gift was slipping away even as she "opened" it: At one point during the party, I put down an old rug to cover a particularly swampy spot.

In its remarkable green coat, the yard sure looked pretty the night of the party. Too bad that three months later it was back to dirt. And not even fancy dirt. Just the same old dirt we always had.

But I don't read a metaphor into that.

One of the great joys of growing old, it seems to me, is celebrating longevity. Maybe the greatest measure of the meaning of longevity is the Golden Anniversary. But at the rate society is going with divorce, nobody is going to make 50 years of marriage.

That is why I think wedding anniversaries these days should be counted in dog years. Any one year together should count for seven. Seven regular years would translate to 49 marriage years. Throw in another year for sportsmanship and you've got yourself a Golden Anniversary.

Of course, anniversaries aren't just about marriages. They also celebrate the invention of Tupperware. And the creation of the Mustang. And the founding of magazines.