Last year, on Thanksgiving, we brought her home from the hospital as the most thankful people on the planet.
This year on Thanksgiving we will celebrate her 1 year birthday. Funny how we thought we couldn’t be more thankful than when she was tiny and fresh and new to us. Well I’m here to tell you that it just gets better. It really does.
And today I’m eleven times more thankful than I was the day she was born.
On Thanksgiving, as we celebrate one year of a life with Edie in it, I can’t get over how grateful I am to know that this adoration I have for this squirmy, funny, busy, hilarious, beautiful spirit will just keep growing.
This morning I’m sitting at my table, hair unwashed and disheveled from a weekend spent on the ranch, wearing sweatpants and the stretched out cami I slept in. The baby is still in her jammies and I can see her out of the corner of my eye, throwing one Cheerio at a time on the floor and watching it drop.
In one month she’ll be a year. And we’ve hit so many milestones in these short months, I can’t imagine what measuring her life in years is going to bring. She blows kisses and claps her hands. She turns her waterworks and emotions on and off like a champion baby manipulator. She’s standing (for two or three seconds anyway) on her own. Give her a few more weeks and she’ll probably be walking, rendering me completely helpless to get anything done around here. We started daycare once a week, and, because among her adorable tricks, she also bites people, I’m a little nervous about her social skills.
She can reach the top of my table, so nothing is safe.
She’d rather play with my Tupperware collection than her toys. She shakes her little body to the sound of music and since suffering recently through her first little cold, has discovered that the worst thing in her entire world is her mother wiping her nose.
These are the little things that make up the big picture of parenthood we used to dream and plan about. It’s nothing and everything like I imagined it when we were trying to get here for all those years, a journey that I have not swept under the rug in the name of compassion and understanding for the families who haven’t had their chance at these little milestones…
There are things I always envisioned doing once I had a child of my own in tow. One of them was sitting my baby on a hay bale at a pumpkin patch and taking a photo.
It seems simple and maybe not such a necessary step on the path of raising a baby, but it was a club I wanted to be a part of, the club of moms and dads bundling up their children, pulling them along in wagons, picking out the best pumpkin in the patch and celebrating a season change with a forced photo or a hay ride or a chaotic walk through a corn maze.
I wasn’t naïve enough to think that the real-life scenario looked like the pages of the Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I knew it was likely more in line with mini-meltdowns and arguments about not wearing shorts in October and bribes to smile for the camera, but I didn’t care. I was happy to pay my mommy dues if it meant I got to be a member.
Last week I finally got to sit my baby on a hay bale and take that photo. A group of moms in town got together to create our own community pumpkin patch in the park, and I made plans to go, despite the snow covering the ground that morning and the chill in the air that afternoon.
I picked up my little sister and we drove down to the park. I forgot Edie’s mittens and her stroller and cash for admission, so one of the moms supplied the mittens and, after my little sister paid, the two of us took turns shifting the bundled up, rosy-cheeked baby from hip to hip as we walked around in the chill, visiting with friends and watching the neighborhood kids jump in bounce houses, paint pumpkins and run wild like kids do.
Jessie Veeder’s daughter, Edie, smiles for a photo at the pumpkin patch. Jessie Veeder / Special to The Forum
And then I set my own baby down on the ground next to a formation of square hay bales, cornstalks and gourds, and we clapped and squealed and coaxed her to smile that smile I’ve been waiting so long to capture.
She didn’t let me down.
And while that pumpkin patch photo wasn’t a huge milestone for my rosy-cheeked daughter, watching her bobble around in her knit beanie and new winter jacket, trying to take a bite out of the little pumpkins propped beside her, it was a huge milestone for me, who finally gets to be her obnoxious, obsessive, photo-taking mother in the pumpkin patch after so many uncertain Octobers.
I’m thinking of this now because this month has been designated as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. And I admit in the past, after nine years, six miscarriages and the loss of any hope of carrying a pregnancy to full term, I wasn’t much for being reminded of those heartbreaking moments in my life. I didn’t want a day to feel obligated to shout it from the rooftops.
No. You were more likely to hear me telling my story in the everyday quiet exchanges between strangers, the ones where I found myself answering the question, “Do you have any children?”
It’s that question that sits like a rock at the bottom of many hearts. It’s that question that gives us a reason to dedicate some time to remember, to understand and to find compassion.
And while I can answer it more easily now, while I can say, “Yes, I have a baby daughter,” and then I can whip out my phone and show you the photo of her, while I’m now part of the pumpkin-patch club, I won’t ever forget the other club in which I also belong.
And for the sake of the families who have suffered such loss, the ones counting the years and wondering what she might have been for Halloween, the ones who felt him kick but never heard him cry, the ones quietly hoping for their chance to forget the mittens and the money and the stroller at the pumpkin patch, I don’t ever want to forget.
So I won’t shout it from the rooftops, that’s not my way, but I will send up a quiet prayer that some way, somewhere, I hope they get their picture.
Here’s my baby, right after she smacked her head on the floor, despite my best efforts to save her from such bumps…
The purpose of my life has become keeping this child of mine from eating the boxelder bugs that keep coming into the house.
My floors have never been clean, but I swear, they’ve never been cleaner than now.
Still not clean though, thanks to the new game the child plays called something like “when I’m sick of eating I will mash it all up with my tiny hands and then fling it on the floor.”
The purpose of my life has become cleaning squashed avocados out of the crevices of her high chair. And off her little pants. And then, if I see it while I’m sweeping up dead boxelder bugs, I might also get to scraping that squished avocado off the floor.
Not that it’s a matter of life or death, those avocados or those squished boxelder bugs, (they probably have some sort of nutritional value, those bugs) but they’re just added tasks on top of the main purpose of my life, which is keeping this child alive.
Seriously. Nobody tells you when you take your sweet bundle of joy home with you, the little miracle that can’t roll over on her own, or hold her head up or her eyes open very long, that in a few months they will try every day, as hard as they can, to get themselves seriously hurt, and in turn, try to kill you. You know, because of all the heart attacks.
Here she is, trying to strangle herself with my bra
I had one the other day. A heart attack. Or something like it. It was sort of cold outside, but we needed some air. So I bundled the child up in her hat and snowsuit, strapped her in her stroller and put a blanket over her. She was pleased. She loves walks. There’s nowhere else in the world she’d rather be than outside, but damn, the wind was cold up top on the road. Too cold for her mother, so too cold for the baby.
So I wheeled her back down to the house and thought, well, while we’re all bundled up she can sit in her stroller and I can pick the rest of my tomatoes. Because I’m still holding out hope that a twenty-fifth hour will show up in a day, or better yet, an eight day in the week, and I’ll find some time to make salsa this year.
So I grabbed my garden basket and headed out back, situated Edie where she was out of the wind and could watch her momma work and looked up every few minutes to yell at Gus for licking my baby’s face.
Not that the baby minded at all. In fact, she was thrilled with it. She grabbed his ears, squealed and leaned in for more, again proving that babies get a real kick out of risky, germy, behavior.
Anyway, my garden is on a little slant of a hill, something I’ve never thought twice about until I looked up again to watch my baby, and the stroller she was in, on the tail end of a sideways tip to the grass.
And I’m not positive how it happened, I mean, I didn’t witness it, but I blame it on the dog.
I threw down the tomatoes and ran to her, certain that one of her limbs was missing, or, at the very least, broken. Positive she had a concussion or at least scarred enough for life that she’ll have flashbacks whenever she sees a dog.
Or a stroller.
Or a tomato.
Oh Lord, I’ve given her an aversion to tomatoes.
I looked at her pink cherub face as it morphed into the beginning stages of her cry– wrinkled up nose, eyes squeezed tight, mouth wide open, silent gasp to get a good breath of air and then a wail.
I unbuckled her from the sideways stroller and picked her up before her next breath, looked her over for blood or mud or a missing foot or something and waited for the next wail to release from her lungs.
But it didn’t happen.
She was up in my arms, caught sight of the dog and smiled.
It was truly a “take your daughter to work day” today as I hauled Edie to town and used her as a model for a little photoshoot I did for this new publication I’m working on for Western North Dakota called “Prairie Parent.”
When work means taking photos of cute kids in cute clothes with your friends and their kids and your baby on a beautiful fall day, it really can’t get any better.
Even if poor little Edie is coming down with something…and I think so am I.
And we have a big weekend of music coming up which means another trip across the state and a little prayer up to stay healthy. And a lot of packing. And a lot of catching up to do on work and laundry between now and Thursday.
Somedays I’m a little overwhelmed, but today I focused on the positives. I thought I was handling it thanks to my mom and the sunshine.
I don’t always think I’m handling it. Sometimes it’s harder to keep it all level and balanced. Sometimes it all comes boiling out my mouth because I can’t stop and think because I’m tired of thinking and I need to say things out loud so that it might all come together in some semblance of perspective.
Last weekend on the way to meet my husband’s family to celebrate his grandmother’s 87th birthday, I had one of those moments where I broke everything down that wasn’t working in my life. Something my husband said set me off and I took it as an opportunity to let the steam out of the frustration kettle that had been boiling for a couple weeks.
I hit what I assume are the same points most of us make after the end of a long week spent balancing on the thin shaky beam we call American life. I worried out loud about getting my work done while staying at home and caring for a now fully mobile baby who spends her day trying her hardest to bonk her head or choke on everything in this house. I stated it was nearly impossible and wondered if maybe it was time to look into a day care once or twice a week.
Then I worried about making enough money to make it worth it and moved that into my frustration about unfinished projects.
And by the way, the house is never clean and how am I going to keep cockleburs out of the baby’s mouth if they keep coming in on the bottoms of our jeans?
Seriously? Is there anyone else in the world who has to worry about their baby eating cockleburs in the house?!
And it just went on from there while the baby slept in the car seat behind me and my patient, but probably pretty annoyed, husband tried to offer solutions I wasn’t in the mood to hear like men tend to do with women during meltdowns like these.
Please tell me other women have meltdowns like these.
I threw those words at the windshield and we rolled down Highway 85 on a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning, the leaves turning gold on the trees, sparkling against a blue sky. By the time we got to where we were going the radio was a bit louder and conversation had turned to the new funny laugh that Edie was trying out lately and what we needed to pick up while we were in the big town.
We spent the day watching Edie get passed around from cousin to aunt to gramma to uncle. We strolled through the zoo and heard her use her new scruffy laugh while watching the otters swim. We swatted away hornets and took some family pictures and ate three different types of cake, gave hugs and drove home toward the setting sun, not a trace of residue on the windows from my morning words.
Earlier that week I stood over our kitchen counter. It was scattered with Tupperware containers, unopened mail, sunglasses and probably a spare tool or two. I had a knife in one hand and a fork in the other and as I sliced into the big juicy steak we pulled from a freezer packed with meat we just picked up from the butcher, I was overcome with this unexpected wave of complete gratefulness, so much so that I had to stop and say it out loud.
“We are so lucky that this is our meal. On a regular Tuesday night,” I said to my husband sitting in front of his plate full of vegetables from the garden and his steak grilled to perfection. “There are people in this world who’ve never tasted a fresh garden tomato.”
He agreed.
Lucky.
Thing is, I didn’t think about that Tuesday night steak on my Saturday morning rant. It was long dissolved into my uncertainties of the week, crumpled into wondering if we were doing anything right.
And I’m sitting here this morning sort of worried about how quickly the taste left my mouth.
Just over a year ago I was holding my breath for a baby to come in and throw my schedule into chaos, just like she’s doing, just like I was complaining about on Saturday morning.
And now here she is, staring up at me from the living room rug while she’s pooping her pants. And I am grateful.
I’m lucky to be grateful. But maybe sometimes, and I’ve never thought of this before, we’re even more lucky to have the chance to be ungrateful.
A pre-nap snuggle after the tiny monster had free reign of the living room for approximately three minutes and I’m sitting here sort of dazed at how fast they turn from helpless babies to tiny humans with minds of their own.
She’s hit the stage where she learns something new every minute, I swear. A few weeks ago it was standing against the furniture.
Tuesday it was standing against the furniture with one hand.
Yesterday she decided to let go and see what would happen.
Because she’s pretty sure she can walk now.
She can’t.
But she’s amused anyway with falling on her butt.
Those legs need less squish and more muscle before this walking train is leaving the station, so I’m optimistic I have some time to do pad the walls of this house.
This girl. She’s funny. Like entertaining and wild and full of this spirit I just can’t get enough of and have a hard time describing.
She laughs all day, like she’s practicing the one she likes best and then she tries it out when things get really funny. Right now it’s a cross between evil and adorable and she is so amused with herself.
And I’m so amused with her.
Because she’s woken up to the world and it’s so fun to watch. I didn’t know how incredible it would be to see her change every day. She knows what it means when she hears the door open. She stops what she’s doing and waits to see him come around the corner in the hallway. She flings her arms and reaches for her dad, squealing with delight when he comes closer to pick her up.
I tried to take her from him to change her diaper on Sunday morning and her lip stuck out in the biggest pout I’d ever seen, literally showcasing on her face her little heart breaking at the thought. So I put her back in the nook of his arm and the pout morphed back into her sort of permanent working smile.
And it was one of the sweetest things I’ve seen.
Every day of this mom thing is like that. Full of such extremes. Extreme frustration. Extreme exhaustion. Extreme happiness. Extreme hilarity. And that all bounces around in the mundane tasks and drone of the work of the ordinary days.
The colors are changing outside our window and just as this baby started waking up in the spring I feel like she’s following another change in the season.
They’re not babies long. That’s what my friend told me a few years back.
I spent Labor Day weekend on a little getaway with my husband to celebrate ten years married and our two birthdays. It was the first time we’ve done anything together since the baby was born. It was the first time I was away from the baby overnight.
We left her in good hands, at home with my mother and father-in-law and two of our nieces who Edie’s attached to and we headed south to the Black Hills of South Dakota, so extremely aware of how we used to take these sort of outings together for granted.
I mean, we only had two bags between us.
There was a moment when I stepped out of the hotel that morning and into the pickup where I felt like I was missing a limb without that baby attached to my hip.
We didn’t do much in particular. We just drove and ate and drank and walked around and visited and made plans for the future like we like to do. Gave each other advice. Laughed at things probably only we would find funny.
And talked about the baby.
We came home on Sunday in time to tuck her in and the next morning my husband turned 34 so I made him breakfast in our kitchen with the cool rain soaking the oak trees outside our windows and our baby crawling around on floor.
We are in this thing now, the both of us. Deep into adulthood and marriage. On the brand new edge of parenting. In the thick of it, as they say.
I doubt we’ve been happier.
And it’s terrifying and surprising and lovely and a wonderful thing to say out loud.
When I turned the more momentous 30 a few years back, I was discouraged at all the advice I was reading in women’s magazines about what it meant to get older. I wondered how many times I could be told what jeans I should wear and what face cream to use.
My cousin, sitting pretty well in the middle of her 30s, told me to shut it when I was whining to her about getting older. She said her 30s have been her best years. She said she finally knows what she wants, who and what she loves and pretty much the type of person she is.
Coming from a woman who had recently won an Elvis-impersonating contest in front of thousands of people, I really couldn’t argue.
But it wasn’t until lately that I started to believe she might be right about this phase of life. I mean, gone are the days of ramen noodle suppers, paying rent on questionable apartments and wondering who I should be when I grow up.
Because I am grown up. This is me, give or take a few hundred lessons coming down the pipe. Not that I no longer have aspirations and goals, I’m simply saying I’ve lived long enough to know which direction I should steer this truck and what prairie trails to avoid to keep me sane and happy.
The day I turned 30 I sat down and wrote a list titled “30 things I know at 30.” Having found no inspiration from those women’s magazines for what’s ahead besides more face cream, I needed to be reassured that I had acquired some tools for this adulthood thing.
I’m glad I saved it. Because among a few reflections on cleaning, clothing choices and eating carrots straight out of the garden were some good reminders:
• When you’re younger you expect your community to take care of you. I know now that it’s our responsibility to take care of our community.
• Art is a chance to see life through one another’s eyes. If we don’t encourage it, we’re ignoring the part that reassures us that it can be beautiful. Because even the sad parts have colors that move you or a melody that sweeps you up.
• I used to think that love was enough. It turns out love goes a lot better mixed with kindness, respect, laughter, humility and a nice meal together once in awhile. So maybe loving is just the easiest part.
• A girl needs a dog.
• My mom was right. My sister did become my best friend. Just like she said she would when I was slamming my bedroom door.
• There will always be more work, more things to build and more stories to write. When there isn’t we will make it so, because as much as anything, living’s in the work.
• Some people struggle to have what may come easy to you. Think of this when you say your hellos. Compassion is a quality we could use more of.
• Learning to cook does not make you a housewife, a stereotype, or some sort of overly domesticated version of yourself. It makes you capable. Same goes with laundry, lawn mowing and hanging a dang shelf by yourself.
• On Christmas, feed the animals first … and a little extra.
• Always wear proper footwear. And by proper, I mean practical, and sometimes practical means cute. You know what I’m saying.
• You can tell yourself there’s a reason for everything. It helps to ease the heartbreak and suffering. Believe it. It’s likely true. But know that sometimes it’s OK to think that life’s not fair, because sometimes it isn’t.
And here is where I’d like to add perhaps the only profound thing I’ve learned since writing this list, which is you just don’t know what’s really in store for you. All you can do is use the strength of your will, your community, your family and your coffee and try to believe that maybe the best work is yet to be done.
Here’s a video of Edie in the lake last weekend. It was hot as hell and it was my birthday month so I decided we needed to take the pontoon out on the lake for the first time all summer to celebrate, you know, now that summer is over.
Edie loves the water, as you can see, and I’m pretty sure she would have floated like this all day.
I’m watching it now because the girl just finished fighting me for a good three hours about the whole nap thing. She finally gave in after having won two previous battles, but I’ve won the third and final and, I’ve come to find out, that’s what really counts in this parenting game.
Who knew ‘strong willed’ came into play so early. Last night while she was standing up in her crib screaming at the top of her lungs, her post-bath mohawk illuminated by the night vision on the baby monitor, I ran across this:
I showed my husband. He said, “Yeah, I think she’s as strong as you, but she might have you beat on the whole stubborn thing.”
Arghhh. And then Awwweee. That’s personality and I love her for it. And it turns out it’s just like they said, for all the hard shit there’s the moments where you discover that your nine-month-old likes to watch the morning news like this.
And it’s really funny.
And then there are the moments you’ve imagined for years and years that come to life right before your eyes and you have to sort of stop to catch your breath and tell yourself that this is what a dream come true feels like.
Sometimes life gives you what you wanted and then it’s up to you to do what you should with it all.
Like squeeze her into a purple lifejacket and set her on her aunt’s lap on a boat floating across a beautiful lake so that you can help her put her tiny toes in the water.
And point out the bald eagle soaring above us…
And the horses who came from their pasture to take a long drink next to our beach blankets…
These things she won’t remember, but I want to.
I will….
Because right now she’s sleeping but tomorrow she’ll likely be scaling that cliff to catch that eagle and I’ll be running after her saying things like “Honey, you forgot your jacket!” or “Did you eat breakfast today?” or “Stop! Let me take your picture!!!”
or “Call me when you get to the top so I know that you’ve made it there safely.”
Oh my, they’re only babies for such a short amount of time.
Last week I packed up my guitar and my baby and the entire contents of both of our closets and headed out to the eastern part of the state to perform a couple really cool and completely different shows.
It was a memorable week of music for so many reasons. First, I’m still getting used to how fun and chaotic and hard it is to cart around a baby on these jobs that become adventures when you add tasks like changing diapers in parking lots and late night delirious giggle fests because the girl won’t sleep when there’s action.
But taking my mom with (or Granny Nanny, as we so lovingly refer to her) is the key to making any of it work at all. And after we met up with dad mid-week, leaving Husband at home to make sure the cows don’t get into my garden, the four of us navigated a schedule that included rehearsals and concerts and finding our way through the construction zone that becomes North Dakota in the summertime.
And in between those things we spent a beautiful day at the lake cabin with my grandparents, took Edie swimming,
shopped for what the heck I was going to wear because I hadn’t decided yet and none of the five dresses I packed were going to work, ate pizza, got our hair done, met up with cousins and spent mom’s retirement on clothes for the baby. Seriously I had to physically take things out of her hands and put them back on the shelves because
#1: I don’t have room in Edie’s closet for all of this and more importantly
#2: We didn’t have room in the car.
Nope. After dad met us with the sound system, his guitar and his tiny little duffle bag, it took everything I know about construction and geometry (which is pretty much nothing) to get us all to fit with the doors closed.
So naturally, at our last stop at the beautiful Dakota Sun Gardens Winery where we sang, mom bought two big baskets. One for my garden, because, you know, my birthday’s coming up, and one for her sister because it was yellow and gold and she works at NDSU.
Only the Veeder clan would have to unload the entire contents of a big SUV (shopping bags, three pairs of boots, a box of diapers, a collection of hand-me-down toys from my cousins, four suitcases, a stroller, two bags of caramel corn and the kitchen sink) on the lawn outside a beautiful venue in order to retrieve the guitars and sound system so we could get the party started.
Yup, we bring the class.
There was a point right before I went up to sing that evening after helping mom wrestle the wiggling, screaming, overtired baby so that we could deal with her poop explosion (in the front seat of the car parked at the entrance of that beautiful place so that each guest could be greeted by a stench and baby crying just like they planned) that I looked at my friend and said something like, “I’m not sure this is all worth the hassle.”
I was sweating and disheveled and hadn’t even really thought about a set list.
But then, I was looking at one of my best friends who I don’t get to see very often. I was playing music on her home turf and she brought her family, baby boy included, who I adore (and spent a good part of my two hour gig staring at). And Edie chilled out as soon as she was up and about again, smiling her big smile at everyone. And she got to hang with her other gramma and aunt who made the trip all the way to the middle of the state to be with her, experience a unique place and listen to the music.
And I got to sing next to my dad and drink wine and tell stories to a captive crowd who were just so lovely.
And the night before I stood on a big, beautiful stage while a song I wrote on the back of a horse came to life as a symphony of strings and horns and everything in between swept in behind me as I sang to a packed crowd in my boots and new dress under a setting sun.
It was an experience of a lifetime to have that many musicians, so much talent sitting in each of those chairs, take my notes and make them soar like that.
In my wildest songwriter dreams, the ones I’ve been concocting out on in the hills singing at the top of my lungs since I was a little girl, I couldn’t have imagined it the way it was that night.
(Listen here…thanks dad for the recording…)
And I know it sounds like it’s all about me and the music, and maybe that week it was.
But I remember having a conversation with my husband about whether or not, after this baby was born, I would be able to continue working like this. Living out here in the middle of nowhere not many of my singing or speaking jobs are close to home.
But he told me he would help in whatever way he could. He said he couldn’t see any reason why not. And my family has taken the same plan of support and I couldn’t be more grateful. Because I think they see the value in it, not because it’s something that I want to do (and certainly not because it’s going to make me rich and famous) but in my history of performing I can say it’s made us some really funny and special memories, ones that we wouldn’t have otherwise.
And last week it proved to be true once again, sending us to see my grandparents one more time that summer, knowing they were in that big crowd listening, giving my cousin and her kids the chance to spend an entire evening with baby Edie, allowing my parents quality time with their granddaughter and sending me to meet and perform with some of the most talented musicians in the region.
(With Blind Joe, a North Dakota singer and recent contestant on NBC’s The Voice, who also performed with the Symphony that night)
And the music gave my friend and I a chance to see each other again, my mother-in-law an excuse to take a road trip to see her sister and my aunt-in-law and excuse to do a girl’s night with friends.
And last week it reminded me that it never goes perfectly smooth when you have a kid in tow, but it is so worth it to hang on to the part of yourself that drives you.
Even though it’s hard, as parents, I think remembering to feed our passions makes us a better family at the end of the day.
Even if the day doesn’t end until you roll into the driveway at 2 am on a Friday night in a car packed to the brim.
Yup, we’re still having fun so we’re off to do it again this week…
We measure our lives by years. We mark them as they pass and wrap them up neat in a package to commemorate. We move on and look back
We anticipate the space between now and the future.
I sat down this morning to write something trivial, like “Ten reasons you shouldn’t wear shorts on the ranch,” because last week the calf tongue up and down my bare leg reminded me. And then the leaky garbage bag reminded me again. And then a frog in my garden took a flying leap and landed splat and slimy on the back of my thigh, and I thought surely it was a sign that I needed to make a public service announcement on the importance of long pants around the barnyard … but then I looked at the calendar, and I was reminded of something a little more important.
(And really, that’s all I had about the shorts thing … some weeks, the idea pool’s a little shallow).
Yes, the gears shifted a bit when I realized that on Aug. 12, I’ve been a wife for 10 years.
For 10 years, I’ve had a man living in my house, leaving his tools on the kitchen table and unclogging the hairball from the drain.
For 10 years, I’ve been mismatching that lovely man’s socks and confusing everybody and the IRS by using two last names.
And I feel like I should be more sentimental about it all. Ten years is a nice, even number. A milestone. Something to celebrate.
But then, 10 years is only a fraction of the time my husband has kept some of the T-shirts in his drawers … This isn’t getting romantic very quickly, is it?
Well, no one’s ever accused us of being overly starry-eyed. For the first few years of our marriage, I thought our anniversary was Aug. 19, so that’s how much I pay attention to things like this.
But truthfully, I don’t really measure the success of our relationship by the calendar. Lord knows I’ve known this boy who became my husband for long enough to mark our friendship and love as a victory, but time is only part of the equation.
I think the way we spend that time is what we like to lament about when we hit these big milestones together. Like, dear husband, remember when we loaded up your dad’s 1970s pickup camper on the back of his old Ford and headed across the great state of Montana to camp in Yellowstone together? And remember that it was 104 degrees? And the pickup didn’t have air-conditioning? Remember the cooler of ice we kept in the back seat and the way the grasshoppers felt slamming into the hot, bare skin of our arms resting on the open windowsill? Remember how, when we finally made it to our campsite and unloaded our supplies, the sky opened up and it started pouring? And you just laughed and cooked our hot dogs on the tiny stove in that tiny old camper?
I loved you so much for the way you could just do things like that, so effortlessly. You can’t be shaken. And that was the start of it all, really. That calm you possess has carried me through a life we try to spend making the minutes count toward a bigger picture we’ve been promising each other will emerge someday.
Although sometimes it’s been hard to see it. And I know that 10 years is just a blip on the timeline of the forever we’ve promised each other. Ten years together as part of this family has shown us that you’re not promised the plans you’ve made and you’re not promised forever. Or tomorrow.
And while the top 10 reasons not to wear shorts in the barnyard fell flat, the top 10 lessons I’ve learned from 10 years of marriage would make a nice and neatly packaged little piece. But I’ve had 10 years to craft those words, and I’ve learned plenty along the way — about myself and about the man who lies beside me every night — and the only thing I can say for certain is that I want him around because he’s good to me.
And I try to be the same for him.
And that’s all I want in the space between now and the future.
Last night Husband came home from mom and dad’s with an armful of mail and a ziplock baggie on the counter full of fresh garden peas.
I was standing in the kitchen feeding the baby and he plopped that ziplock down on the counter next to me.
“Your dad thought you might want these,” he said. “They’re from his garden.”
I held the spoon full of smushed plums in a hover position in front of my wiggling baby and with my other hand I examined that bag of peas in disbelief and envy.
“He does NOT have peas yet!” I declared to my husband who had moved on with his life, and pulled the hover spoon from my hand and into the baby’s mouth.
“No wayyyy!!!” I declared again.
“Yup,” said the man I married.
In my head I visualized the plants I examined in his garden just week before. In my head I thought there was no way they could have flowered and grown a plethora of vegetables while I was away on a camping trip for the love of Martha Stewart.
But my head was foggy. I was tired. Turns out the baby doesn’t sleep much on camping trips.
And neither does her mom.
The dad?
The dad could sleep on the back of a cheetah chasing after a gazelle in the jungle. Wait, do cheetahs even live in the jungle?
Probably not.
I don’t even know things anymore. Earlier that morning I sneezed and immediately said “Pew.” Instead of “excuse me.” And then, realizing my error, I corrected it by saying “Thank you.” In front of all the family. They are very likely concerned. But what the hell? This baby took all of my brains.
Anyway, back to the peas. I left them sitting on the counter without further discussion while I went about making supper, cleaning up the baby, throwing a load of camping blankets in the washing machine and generally biding my time before the child went down for the night so I could too.
But I couldn’t get past the peas. He couldn’t possibly have peas already. Didn’t they just sprout a few weeks ago? Mine are barely visible leaves in a sea of black dirt out front. And while he planted them on Memorial Weekend like he was supposed to, and used a pile of sheep manure, and watered and weeded and basically pulled out his A+ horticulturalist game, there is no way that little vegetable plot could be that far along and that far ahead of mine…
Unless…
Husband came out from putting the baby down and sat in his chair. I plopped down the ottoman and stared blankly out the window while I mulled over my conclusion before turning Husband and declaring…
“I’m pretty sure dad transplanted his garden from a greenhouse. I mean, think about it. One day his garden is dirt and the next he has full fledged plants. I never saw the in-between! That has to be it. Those pea plants were started already when he put them in the ground. It makes sense. Makes total sense!!”
“Those peas were from the Farmer’s Market.”
“Wait. What?”
“Your dad. He got them from the Farmer’s Market.”
“Wait. What Farmers Market?”
“The one in Minnesota. He thought it would be funny to give them to you and tell you they were his. I didn’t know how long to let it go. He thought it would be funny to mess with you. And it was.”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch... 