Sick days for the mommy . . .

My husband is too good to me.  Have I said that here yet?  He just really is.  I am beyond blessed with this man o’ mine.  For just being a couple of kids when we got together, we’ve done alright.  And he’s done stupendously.

I’ve been sick for the last two weeks.  Whatever horrid germ it is has worked its way through all five of us at some point.  Today I’m on day two of antibiotics and am starting to feel better, but I think the things are making me nauseous.  I feel pregnant:  the constant sensation of almost-barfing.  It’s helping console me on the whole empty-arms whine I wrote last time.  Blech.

So, this hubby of mine . . . since I was smart enough to not get sick on a Sunday, I’ve had some real down time to get better.  And I’m grateful.  And I know not everyone has this, and I write this to remind myself in darker days (read:  days when I am re-thinking this whole marriage thing) that my husband really does go above and beyond to be kind to me and to take care of all of us.

I thought I’d try a funny post today, but it’s not happening.  Where has all my funny gone?  Maybe tomorrow.  Tomorrow when my brain is not fuzzy, when I don’t feel like heaving my chicken noodle soup.  Tomorrow I’ll tell the tale of Screaming Ruthie.  I’ll contemplate the great mysteries of the toddler who has a 100% potty success rate when she’s naked and a 100% failure rate when thick gotchies are applied.  Go figure.  Tomorrow I’ll reflect on the fact that I think school is driving my children insane.  Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.  Tomorrow I’ll tell all the silly tales of motherhood.  Today I’m going to curl up and feel nauseous and revel in my chance to rest.

A Love Story

I know.  I know I wrote about our first date last year.  But that was last year.  I’m all sorts of nostalgic this year.

It’s funny, though, because when I wrote my post on this date last year, my blog audience consisted mostly of my imaginary friends from my favorite message board.  They don’t know my husband at all, and most of them have never laid eyes on me.  So, I was throwing this story out there to people who don’t know me in my personal, real, day-to-day life and never had.

In the year since then, I took the big leap and started linking my blog to facebook–or vice versa, I’m not sure–and with that, my audience has grown.  Now, it may still be some of my message board friends who are also FB friends who didn’t know about my blog before, but it also includes some friends I interact with on at least a weekly basis, and other friends I haven’t seen much, if at all, over the last 20 years, but who knew me when.  And knew Ry when.  And were our friends when this first date of ours took place.

So, the change in audience makes reflecting on the beginnings of this relationship a little . . . odd.  More intimate?  More exposed?  I’m not sure.  But that won’t stop me.

Because it’s September 14th.  A holiday in this house.  I was greeted first thing this morning with a “Happy September 14th” from a very nice man.  So every year, we pull out the stories.  Much like the pilgrim stories of Thanksgiving.  I’m sure some details have been lost along the way, but I don’t think quite as much has been rewritten as with the pilgrim stories.  We’ve told and re-told our story to one another every 14th of September since 1991–the first anniversary–as well as at various times throughout the year.  And I think it’s important.  I think it’s important for everyone to rehearse, rehash, repeat their own stories.  It helps us remember who we are, who we were.

Yesterday we spent the day with a lovely couple whose only child is in his second year of college.  They were telling us what a shock to their system it was when their son first went away to school.  The two of them sat there and stared at one another:  Well.  What do we do now?  It took them a couple of weeks to realize that, well, now they could go out to dinner with one another any time they wanted, that they could spend all the one-on-one time together they wanted.  They reveled in it.

In the midst of my day-to-day, up-to-my-elbows-in-small-kids life, it’s been important to me, to us, to remember our story.  To remember how it is we got together in the first place and then remember that it is still at the heart of what’s keeping us together.  I’ve spent intentional time and energy on keeping us connected to who we were way-back-when as a way of helping us to stay connected to who we are now–and by we, I mean Ry and Lee, not the whole family–so that we can maintain that we into those days that are out there–somewhere–when it will, once again, be just Ry and Lee rattling around in these halls.  Celebrating the days of yore, the days of just fun and friendship and laugh, laugh, laughing, helps keep us grounded through these days when we are so focused on these little people that it’s sometimes hard to see the face of the grown-up on the other side of the little heads.

So, today we remember.  We remember how we were such good friends.  Just friends.  How our friendship grew slowly, over the course of years.  How we were both surprised when we looked at the other and realized . . . hunh.  You might be a little more than a friend to me.  How the end of our first date, in a very sweet and innocent way, with a hand-hold and a hug, brought us home.  Home to a place we knew we belonged and where we hoped to stay.  It was comfortable and natural and easy.  Just easy.  Like breathing.  Yes.  This is it.  It hasn’t all been easy, but the getting together, the transition from friend to . . . different category of friend . . . was easy.  And that’s where we remain.  Friends of a different kind.  And I give thanks to God for bringing us together in precisely the way he brought us together.  And I pray for 19 more years like the last 19:  years that get better and better.  And then I pray for another 19.  And heck, I might just shoot for another 19 after that.  I like this guy.  I really do.

Upon Request from the Man I Love . . .

I came downstairs this morning to a freshly brewed pot of hot coffee.

“Hmmm.  Thank you!”

“Yeah.  I want to see a blog about this.”

So here it is.  I hope you’re laughing, because we sure were.  The man just cracks me up.

And I didn’t even need to use any womanly wiles.  Unless you count broadcasting to the world his new get-out-of-making-coffee scheme.

Last Day.

And I couldn’t be happier about it. Yet another good going-to-sleep night last night. Really it went about the same as the three previous nights. Now, do we think these kids could do this as easily with two of us here? Do you think Hannah can go to sleep all on her own in her bed, letting her dad just go right downstairs instead of lying down with her for a while which inevitably leads to his falling asleep there and my going up to poke him awake 45 minutes later? (By the time I got to the end of that sentence, did you remember that it started as a question?) My money’s on a big fat Nope! But somehow I think Ry will muddle through having to snuggle with his little girl for a while after not having seen her for four days.

I never mentioned how I didn’t even get to talk to Ry from Friday morning until 8:30 last night. I think that’s some sort of new record. Well at least a record for the last three years or so. It’s amazing to me, our history, the nature of our relationship, the way things have changed. We started out as friends spending all day, every day (Mon-Fri) together, then started dating and added every Friday and Saturday evenings. But then we went to college and only saw each other once a month at best, sometimes less, except for summers, of course. As college progressed, we spent more and more weekends together during the school year, but spent progressively less time together over the summers as Ry’s ROTC training increased. By the end of college we were well-conditioned for separations.

One summer during seminary (Ry’s years) we spent 12 weeks apart while Ry did Chaplain Officer Basic Course. We saw each other once during that time, and only because my beloved aunt died and Ry returned for the funeral. The summer he graduated involved three weeks apart, followed by six weeks together, followed by two weeks apart. Ry’s first six years of ministry involved his spending anywhere from three to six weeks a summer away from home as well as two to six weekends away through the school year. We were so good at separation. We felt like God had really used our college years to prepare us for a marriage of frequent separations.

I never liked being separated from him. I would be offended by the church ladies who suggested how nice a break I must be having with Ry away. That still mystifies me. I always missed him and preferred having him around. I’m pretty sure that’s why we got married. But still, we could enter a zone, the separation zone, and really do OK with it. Then we had Isaac. And all of a sudden, I never wanted Ry to leave home again. Ever. Ry spent 18 months of Isaac’s first two years on Active Duty, coming home every night, but after 14-16-hour days, 29 days a month. That was almost separation. And in some ways worse, because he was there but not there. Since that time, though, he has spent very little time away from home.

Ever since we moved to our current church, he’s been home. He no longer leaves for a week at a time; his weekend retreats are limited to two a year. It’s nice. I like it. But I think in the meantime I’ve lost sight of how well we still really can do with separation. So why so desperate for him not ever ever never to leave? Well. Really there are two different components to the separation, and I don’t think I’ve thought of it before. It’s not so much that I’m can’t-breathe-without-him desperate for him to be here. Ry and I do well enough being separated from one another. But neither of us does really well being alone with the kids for a long time. So. We’re the same as we’ve always been, relationally. We just desperately need each other for the whole parenting thing. And that’s OK. Our kids like having both of us around.

What was nice about these days with him gone is that I’ve discovered I really can do the parenting thing solo. I prefer not to, but I can. I’ve reflected on that a lot as Ry has thought about returning to the Army in some capacity (Reserves or Guard). It really has helped to do better than simply survive these days. Of course it’s required my talking on the phone to my sister two or three times a day, her and my mom spending the day with my kids while I attended Saturday’s presbytery meeting, my sister delivering our take-out pizza on Thursday, as well as her taking Hannah for a special outing all day Friday. OK. So I could do the solo parenting thing if I married my sister. But then, I guess, I wouldn’t be solo anymore, now would I? OK, so back to knowing I can’t really do this parenting thing alone. But should I be able to?

Hmm. Thoughts for another day.

Eighteen Years Ago Tonight

Eighteen years ago tonight, Ry and I had our first official date. It’s a date we’ve always remembered and celebrated in one way or another. We had four anniversaries of our first date before we were married, and I really think that sealed the date in our heads for all time. That and we were just kids when we started dating, so I think that left us more prone to flights of sentimentality.

We met in sixth grade. We became friends in ninth, beginning with my singing solfege into the back of his head in Algebra II (I had choral class immediately prior) and continuing with my classroom habit of shooting off snide comments under my breath that happened to bounce off the back of his head. Both of these things prompted him to turn around and look at me funny. Eventually, though, he stopped looking at me funny and started laughing. Then he started talking back. And then we became friends. *sniff*

Two introverted people can take a while to get their romantic acts together. We were no exception. We needed a mutual friend to set up our first date, despite the facts that we were both immensely interested in each other, that we spent practically every minute of school together, and that we both talked more to one another at our junior prom than we spent talking to our dates. Even our homeroom teacher asked us if we were dating. But alas, these silly kids were both too shy to make a move. So our friend set us up for a group thing after a Friday night football game. (Wow, is this a cheesey story!)

And so it began. On September 14th, 1990, during our senior year of high school, Ry and I had our first date, at a Friendly’s, eating ice cream sundaes together. And I knew. I knew the moment he ordered a hot fudge sundae. This. This was the man boy for me. 35 million gallons of ice cream later (I kid you not), I know. This. This is the boy man for me.

Ry and Lee, circa 1990