On Cleaning Out Closets

Guy and I have spent the last year re-inventing; putting a concerted effort into our marriage.  We have always gotten along well, but you know, everyone can try harder to be better, especially me. 

Also, we have maybe possibly developed some not great habits. We have silent conflicts... the kind where you can hear crickets chirping. Which isn't the same as not arguing, because we have the argument alone in our own heads, which, due to our unfortunate inability to read minds, gets us a whole lot'a nowhere. 

You know how when you decide to organize a closet, it can get pretty messy as you unpack years of "stuff"? Yah, same thing with marriage.  It doesn't mean everything is falling apart, but true self examination can be like cleaning your mirror and realizing you really need to pluck your mustache. Add to that some major "out-of-our-hands, and not-to-be-blogged-about" crises, and it piles up to a more challenging year than most. 

My closet cleaning has led me to learn a bunch about codependency.  I always thought codependancy was extreme, like when you are the 700 pound person stuck in your house and your spouse is the one bringing you 8 pounds of chow-mien and four pizzas a day.  Well, I don't do any of that, so I'm good, right?  

Uh, yeah, not so much.  It's a whole attitude thing.  While one action done in a certain frame of mind might not at all be codependant-y, the exact same action done with a different intention may absolutly be (you might not understand the technicalistic-ish lingo I am using here. I would never make up words to try to sound smarter. I'm pretty sure codependant-y is in the dictionary). If I bring you a brownie to be nice, thats, well, nice (unless you're on a diet, then that's just mean. Mean brownie-ing). If I do it to secretly obligate you to do something for me, say, pumice the barnacles off my scaly heals, that's a no-no.  Which seems cut and dry, but can be way harder to figure out when it's tiny little behaviors spread over two decades, let me tell ya. 

So to honor our year of marital closet cleaning, Guy and I threw together a last -minute anniversary get-away.  I hurried out that morning looking for an anniversary card that would magically fit the occasion, and I found SQUAT in an envelope for $4.99. Sometimes I would pick up a card and loudly moan at the 14 stanza syrupy soliloquy inside, before returning it to the slot it came from (only it wasn't the right slot, because the slot had mysteriously vanished, and I am mad at the card company now for wasting my time, so I don't care if I put it back in the right darn slot anymore).

Suddenly, I'm feeling snarky at everything.  Each card seems to be a lie. I can't buy a card that says, "Here's to another year of wedded bliss!"  It's wedded hard work!  And two rabbits in clothes making a toast isn't gonna cut it.

The anniversary cards are all in one little corner where the air conditioner is mysteriously making some eardrum bursting sound that apparently only I can hear, and now I am sympathizing with all the dogs I have tormented over the years with those silent dog whistles. The lady in the little store vest is doing the fakey-fake cheerful voice to everyone who walks in, and when she asks me if I'm finding everything I think I might have to punch her, because I don't need a card that says, "Pookie pie, our marriage is like a day at Disneyland and we both poop rainbows and I am now a wonderful person all because of YOU!"

(Wow, now I'm really crabby. Closet cleaning makes card buying hard.)

I need a card that says,

"Holy crap, dude.  That was a rough one.  Thanks for hanging in there with me."

I settle on a card that says, "Damn, I'm lucky."

Tessa scolds me for buying a card with a curse word on it.  Great, now I'm a crabby wife AND potty-mouth mom.

In the end, we had a nice little overnight escape.  We talked about our growth over the year, and consoled each other over the rough bits. We ate grown up food and a lot of chocolate, and wandered around in stores we would have been thrown out of if we'd had the miscreants with us.  And not once did I have to tell Guy to stop climbing on anything, so, yah, pretty good.

I think when you pile on a few years, you start getting better at certain things, and so God says, "Ok, they're ready for the next challenge", and something hits that would have turned you into a puddle a few years before.  I'm glad they don't all come at once. And I'm glad I have this good man at my side to ride the waves with, storms and all. Even if he still can't read my mind. 

Yup, I'm pretty *cus'word* lucky. 

Not Hawaii

Two years ago we started saving.  Looking ahead to our 20th anniversary, we wanted to save up for the Hawaii trip that we have hoped for and talked about for almost two decades.

Then Natalie came.  You know the rest... well, most of it.

Besides having spent away our little nest egg during "The Era of the Blood Clots" on things like gas for two round trips a day to Roseville for two weeks and sometimes-daily doctor visits, fast-food and compression stockings, there was the new reality; on our 20th anniversary, we would have a nursing toddler.  My idea of a picture-postcard anniversary didn't include an interloper in a onesie, I promise you.  In perfect irony, we had actually housed a couple unexpectedly only days before as they made their way to their new dream home... Hawaii.

For Christmas this year our sweet friend, Joyce, gifted us a night's stay "somewhere" to use on our anniversary, so I found a little B&B in Loomis, only about 40 minutes from home.  I felt oh-so-sexy, dahling, as I packed diapers, wipes and cheerios.  Ooo-la-la.  We did stop at Dianda's Italian bakery for cannoli before leaving town, which, ever since our anniversary in New York, will always put me in a lovey-dovey mood, poopy diapers not withstanding.

Natalie was a dream all day as we headed out into the crisp December air, window shopping while grazing on Christmas leftovers from a cooler in the van.  The night before we left she began running a mild fever, of course, and though she was sick the whole time we were gone, she didn't complain a bit.  In fact, she slept much of the day away in her stroller.

Yeah.  It seemed pretty awesome at the time.  You know what is better than having a toddler on board during a romantic weekend getaway?  Having a sick and very awake toddler.  Kind of like having the Channel 5 News team in your room, or a very curious squirrel.  In our quest for alone time, and yet needing to balance that with keeping her safe in a strange place with uncovered power outlets, we set up my phone to Netflix, and, I confess with my head hung in shame, we turned on Barney.  I know.  I'm not proud.  It was a weak parenting moment.  I will make up for it later with some Baby Einstein or something.

Guy and I left her where we could see her from the door, and turned on the jaccuzi tub in the next room.  Our little chaperon made sure to drop by for frequent inspections to make sure that the show stayed strictly G-rated.  Barney did his share, metaphorically wedging himself firmly between Guy and I via his nasally serenading (sing with me now; "I love you, you love me..."). Oh. So. Romantic.  We managed to laugh as Natalie did her rounds, a stern expression on her face that read, "All right boys and girls, keep your hands where I can see them."  It's certainly wasn't palm trees and white sand beaches.

The next morning we sat in the quaint dining room of the old Victorian (quaint as in doilies and vintage china, not as in pealing paint and pigeons in the attic).  The only other folks staying there that day were a friendly couple about our ages.  Their's was a second marriage, their kids all grown and gone.  Again, the irony was not lost on me.  The wife was a pediatrician, and as we chatted we told them a little about our experience getting Natalie here.  We shared that the doctors had never been able to explain why my blood titers had been rising (indicating that my body was building antibodies that would attack Natalie's red blood cells), only to have her born completely unharmed, her blood type identical to mine and thus having protected her.  With the same blood types, why had my titers been rising?

"Oh, I can tell you what happened there," she said, sharing with us that, as she has been looking for the cause of childhood rheumatoid arthritis, the understanding of prenatal blood issues was right up her alley.  "When a woman is pregnant, along with the exchange of oxygen and nutrients, a certain number of the mother's and the baby's cells cross the placental barrier."  She explained that those cells stay alive, and though the immune systems of the mom and babe keep them suppressed, that during subsequent pregnancies the mother's immune response is suppressed to allow the new baby to safely grow.  Those cells from her other children then do what cells do best; multiply.  In our case, Jonah's cells were increasing and my antibody response was rising to battle the increase of positive-typed blood cells.  "So every child carries the living cells of their mother in them for the rest of their lives, and every mother carries the living cells of every child they have ever carried.  Their children are literally with them forever."

It was a beautiful living metaphor, and the final puzzle piece, the last unanswered question in my heart to explain why everything had gone the way it had with my pregnancy with Natalie.  Well, maybe not the last, as I still may never know why I clot so easily, and if it was really blood clots that killed the four babies we lost, but I still was filled with a wave of comfort and clarity.  I sat with Natalie on my lap as she ate the last of my oatmeal and nibbled my toast crusts, the sunlit room showing off the strawberry color in her fuzzy bedhead.  What a little miracle.

There was also a little thrill in knowing that, in fact, each of my children are in alive in me... all ten of them; those that are with us and those that are not.  I know God knows and loves His children when he places that perfect person in our path to give us a little something.  To me, the evidence of God's love is in the gifts he gives us that we don't need, or in our mortal frailty could ever deserve, and have never even asked for.

Guy and I wandered the neighboring Old Town Auburn that day with that sweet baby girl, our interloper, our chaperon.  Bundled against the chill 50+ degree air with frigid gusts of wind, we laughed as we passed a sign that sat in the front window of a touristy-clothing-store - the type of store where men with round bellies can find white linen pants and palm tree patterned shirts to wear golfing in some far-off tropical destination. "Maui - 78 Degrees, Sunny", it bragged.  Yah, yah.  I know.  Hawaii is great.  Thanks for the reminder.

As we headed home that evening, we decided to stop for dinner.  Feeling super frugal-proud, I looked up the restaurant I had given Guy a Groupon for as an anniversary gift.  Upon checking the menu online, I learned that the Groupon wasn't the great deal I thought it would be because the entrees were about $20 a piece, and it was still a few days from payday.

"Ooo, L&L is on the way home," Guy suggested, reminding me of the little take out joint with great Kalua Pig.  I don't know if it was a subconscious choice that stuck with our theme of NOT being in Hawaii, but it didn't occur to us that we were eating Hawaiian food until we were seated on the orange vinyl seats, our styrofoam plates piled high with rice, BBQ and Chicken Katsu.  Guy told me how he would stop here on his way to or from the hospital when he would come see me.  He had even brought me some one night.  We sat with the comfy glow that comes when you count your blessings. 

"There dear," Guy said, pointing his white plastic fork at the poster on the wall of the tropical sunset beach scene framed with palm trees, "You can look at it and pretend you're in Hawaii."

"I'm good," I smiled.

To my Sweetie, thank you for being you.  Thank you for all you do for us. The next twenty years is going to rock.  I love you.