I am sitting on a conference bridge now, trying to figure out what one of the presenters is saying. He speaks so incredibly fast that I don’t understand him a LOT. I know this is my problem, because he has a really strong accent, but he obviously speaks English a heck of a lot better than I speak, well, any other language besides English. I could swear he just said something about “managery Russians” and I don’t know where that could come into our topic.

Tim says I do this all the time, even to him. I will miss-hear something, and look at him and say, “Did you just say ‘managery Russians’? Because I don’t know what that means…”

Then he laughs at me.

This happens when he writes notes to me as well. Infamous story in our early marriage: Tim added something to the shopping list, and like most of his handwriting, it was a scribble. We had been spending a LOT of time working on our old house, and I just figured he wanted to use the “cheap clothes pins” to hold up something, or keep it in place while it dried, or whatever. So, I shrugged and bought a bag of cheap clothes pins.

I get home, and he asks me why I bought a bag of clothes pins.

“They were on the list! See, right here.”

Yeah, that would have been “cheap cloth napkins.”

I’ve never lived it down. Any time I either miss-hear him, or I can’t read what he writes, he says “cheap clothes pins.” If one of us is feeling particularly grumpy that we have to go to the store, the other will covertly add “cheap clothes pins” to the list.

We still have the bag of cheap clothes pins. We’ve used a couple.

I think they’ve saved our marriage. You have to be able to laugh, especially when you deal with county people, and paperwork that you swear you’ve filled out before, or strange family, or whatever. You have to know the code words to get yourself and your partner to laugh.

Cheap clothes pins. Get yourself a bag.

I found these words in a journal I was writing in almost three years ago, before J-Man was born. What it would be like for the me-of-then and the me-of-now to meet given everything that has happened! And what would the me-of-then think of how many layers of meaning there were to his words that he couldn’t possibly have known about then?

These entries are excerpts from those journals and are addressed to our son. (Don’t worry, this isn’t going to go over the whole 40 weeks!)

——————–

(written a few days after Mary got her positive pregnancy test)

It was only a week ago that we found out that you were going to become a part of our life. We have been stunned most of the time ever since. Becoming a parent for the first time, especially when you are over 30 like us, is hard to comprehend. For me, it’s the sense that I won’t be a good father and that I won’t be all you need me to be. Maybe by the time you read this, I will have proved more to you than that.

There’s always the fear at the beginning that things will not go according to plan. It happens to a lot of people. We tried very hard to prepare the way for you to come into the world and have wished so hard that it would come true. As I often do, it’s also a time for a lot of anxiety wondering whether something will go wrong. Writing my thoughts down here perhaps is a way to make it seem more real, but mostly as an expression of faith that I know now that you will come safely into the world and into our lives.

(when Mary was about seven weeks)

Next week comes the first exciting doctor’s visit. Using some Doppler ultrasound device I don’t remotely understand, we should be able to see your heart beat for the first time. At eight weeks, such a thing astonishes me, especially because the pictures in the book say you probably look like a very tiny, wriggly, alien-shaped entity attached to an oversized head. I’ll still think you look great regardless of the pictures.

Sometimes during this process of waiting, I wish I could dump everything I know through your cord and into your head. Not book knowledge really, but experience and hopefully some wisdom. I imagine, though, that there are a lot of things we’ll just have to learn together. I’ll apologize in advance if I’m overprotective or obsessive about helping you learn how to be and live in the world. It can oftentimes be a scary place. I know you’ll figure it out though.

(after the first ultrasound at eight weeks)

In the first eight weeks, you know that you are going to be parents and feel excited about it, but it’s still so hard to believe you are actually coming. Seeing and hearing your heartbeat brought it all home in this one overwhelming moment. Someday when you are in the same place, you will know what it feels like.

We will always remember this day because your heart lit up in front of us for the first time and our love for you was so strong that in that moment I could not imagine being able to love you more; but I know I will. It has been that way with your mom. On our wedding day, I looked into her eyes and knew all the way down to the very core of my soul that I loved her far beyond any love I had ever felt. I could not imagine loving her more than I did then, but it happened anyway. The great thing about love is that there is room for everybody, and it never has to know any limits.

(about nine weeks - right after our Snow Storm From Hell that year, and strangely symbolic of things to come)

Someday someone may mention this storm to you and you can tell them this story about how I left one part of town at 1:00 PM and didn’t get home until 9:00, over what should have been a 20-minute drive. I feel a strange sense of accomplishment for beating the odds and getting home. Maybe the moral of story for you is, use common sense but stick with it and work your way out of whatever is in front of you. Determination mixed with some good common sense is a valuable gift to have.

(after the 11-week ultrasound - don’t worry, last entry)

To see you today with a very identifiable head and face, your torso, and little arms and legs was amazing. How far you have come in only three weeks!

You were pumping those little legs like you were trying to run around in there. Your heart is strong and you are starting to stretch your legs out to come into this great big world. Keep doing your dance. Grow strong.

[Back to the present day - Three weeks is still a long time in your world even now. And how I love to see you dance.]

——————

If you’ll humor me a bit longer, this is a little poem I wrote about what it feels like for me to watch J-man grow up so much each day. I wrote it well over a year ago, but it still fits me. It expressed both my joy for all the memories I have of him when he was really little, and the grief that comes when you box up your child’s baby stuff. You have to admit to yourself that they’re growing up. It all goes by so quickly.

As I read this poem now, I think how much of my fear of not being a good dad has been boxed away now, too. Experience is a great teacher, but my son may be the best teacher of all. When I wrote it, I never imagined we’d be where we are now. I’ve realized how many of my old ways and habits that brought a lot of negativity and fear have gone away either because I put them away intentionally or because they seemed to have worn out on their own.

That doesn’t remotely mean I’m all ‘with it’ now. What a joke that would be. It just means that this is a good sign I’m learning something - something I never would have learned without being the father of this wonderful little boy. You are the best Father’s Day gift I could ever hope for.

Outgrowing

I put new griefs into boxes
reminding myself to store them
somewhere away from the old.

There’s the little, white onesie with
	the tiny, yellow ducks,
the sleeper with I Love Daddy on it,
the little footie socks you wore last winter,
the blue hat with the doggie ears
	that you refused to keep on,
the red and white-striped jumper you wore
	your first time at the beach,
the soft, cream-white sleeper you wore in the hospital
	against your jaundiced skin.
It was the only newborn outfit you ever wore;
we had to stuff you into it for pictures.

You’ve outgrown these blankets that swaddled you
while I plowed furrows in the carpet
during your walking naps.
They go in with the hooded towels,
especially the one with the teddy bear head
that covered your long, wet, hobbit hair.

You’d pull the hood over your face
waiting expectantly for us to find you;
we always would.

Someday I hope you get to pack away memories like this. 

I guess I should put away too my fear
of being a bumbling father.
We’ve done well together so far.

I tell myself, it’s OK to outgrow things.

Thanks for reading.

As I’m writing this, Mary and I are sitting in the Seattle airport waiting for our red-eye flight to George Bush Houston-tinental Whatever Airport, where we’re be long enough to eat and pee and get on the plane to our real destination - home.

Well, our REAL destination is wherever J-Man is. Her parents are bringing him to meet us at the airport when we arrive, about nine hours from when I’m writing this. We’ve missed him terribly over the past three days - to put it mildly - even though I’ve felt less mental about it than I thought I would.

Every child under age five we’ve seen has reminded us of him. (Mary just ‘awww-ed’ at a child going by us at the gate…) It’s been hard seeing other parents with their kids out traveling, but we’ve gotten through it well enough. Besides, there’s no way in this world he would have lasted more than a few minutes on a plane.

We’ve called home a couple of times a day to check in on J-Man, who - according to Grammy - has done swimmingly well. So either, 1) he’s been doing swimmingly well, or 2) she’s trying to reassure us while he’s swinging from the furniture and frothing from the mouth. For the sake of our own sanity, we’ll assume it’s the former until proven otherwise.

We had a great time at The Wedding - Part Deux, even though it was downright tropical by Seattle standards (upper 80s) and no one here has air conditioning. Luckily, we wore guayaberas for the wedding, which are worn in tropical climates for an important reason - they are loose, breathable, and very comfy when it’s hot. The happy, twice-united couple should be off in Hawaii by now drinking in the sun, sand, and alcohol. Meanwhile, we have a lot of laundry to do when we get home.

We had fun visiting with Mary’s best friend’s family, too. We all went to high school together, frighteningly enough. Special thanks to their kids for de-aging us a few years by getting everyone in the Ford Focus POS rental to headbang to whatever was playing on their scary phones while I was also trying to dodge dead Raccoons-of-Unusual-Size roadkill and follow their mom to the pizza place. They should also get bonus points for attempting to teach me how to play Guitar Hero, which by the way seems to have set off a wave of arthritis in me after failing badly at playing Metallica. My dork score was off the scale there.

I think the lesson here is that it really is good to get away and get a break for a few days. Mary and I have enjoyed being together as just us, crappy plane seats and all. I’ve missed us just being an ‘us’.

We’re probably idiots for flying overnight back to Charlotte and then driving three hours home instead of going 45 minutes to Mary’s parents’ house, sleeping, and trying it again tomorrow, but we just want to get home. I want to sleep in my own bed for once. It’s been nearly a week. Most of all, we just want to see our kid. Of course, we’ll probably go bat-crazy when he see him and be so full of adrenaline and parenting chemicals that it’ll fuel us all the way home.

More trip post-mortem-ering when we get home. (Gee thanks, Alex. Have some Chap Stick. )

We’ll be back to normal programming soon, I hope.

Greetings from 30,000 feet above the East Coast of the US! I don’t know whether there’s a Mile High Blogging Club, but let’s not go there.

I’m on my way home from Boston and the wedding of my best friend - second only to the person I’m married to, of course. I was best man in the wedding. What a great ceremony it was, filled with wonderful people who celebrated like few weddings I’ve ever been to. The outpouring of support was moving, and I especially appreciated the free rides that liberated me from the ridiculous tolls and travails around Boston’s airport, plus a futon to crash on!

It was a bilingual service (English and Spanish), and of course being the lame American that I am, I don’t know Spanish at all. One thing I learned is that there are those moments when you don’t need to know a language to understand the power of the meaning behind them. When my best friend’s now mother-in-law put a double lasso rosary necklace (el lazo - not so great pictures of it here) - a family heirloom of great significance - around their necks to join them together, I had no idea what she was saying, but I knew it was beautiful. I could see the pride and the blessing in her eyes.

Of course, all weddings remind me of ours. It was good to be reminded of what we felt like then and how far we have come since. That’s a mighty long way, baby!

After six hours of sleep over the past two days, I am borderline incoherent, though I’m sure many people think I’m usually that way. Two mornings in a row getting up before 4:00AM has been a bit rough. We’ll be off to Seattle and The Wedding - Part II tomorrow morning. With family and friends spread out all over the country, I suppose no one can have just one wedding anymore.

The Boston trip was a solo for me, but Mary and I are going to Seattle together. The hardest part of all this isn’t the lack of sleep - a few lattes, some sugar, and various other jolting chemicals can artificially keep you awake long enough - it’s traveling without J-Man.

There’s no way on earth he could have handled the wild travel hours, the plane ride and having to stay in a seat that long, the air pressure changes in flight, the noise and the people, and (not) sleeping in strange places. I don’t like flying either so I can imagine what it would be like for him.

(Currently, I’m cruising six miles up in a metallic paper towel roll with wings that was constructed entirely by people under four feet tall…I could just see him in here…)

So after I limp back into the house today, I’m going to shower, eat, dump out the Boston pile from the suitcase and replace it with the Seattle pile, then we’re driving to Charlotte to Mary’s parents’ house. We’re going to leave J-Man with them, fly from Charlotte to Seattle in the morning, then return overnight Sunday night on the red-eye. If we actually come through all that with some measure of alertness and our blood latte level is high enough, we’ll meet her parents and J-Man at the airport, transfer the car seat and luggage, and drive the 3 1/2 hours back home. I may sleep for a month after that.

He’s in good hands with the ‘outlaws’ (just kidding!) as Mary’s parents are hard-wired for grandkid spoilage and do their jobs incredibly well. Lord knows what they’ll have gotten him by the time we come home!

Still, it’s so hard to leave him. I was talking with one of the moms at the wedding and she told me about her - now adult - special needs son. We talked about how hard it is to be with your child most every hour of every day and work so intensely with him and then have to switch all that completely off when you leave for a few days. It feels to me like throwing a speeding car suddenly into reverse.

I saw other toddlers at the wedding and felt terribly homesick. I only last saw him about 36 hours ago, but I couldn’t help but look at his pictures and watch a little bit of a home movie on my iPod on the plane.

When I called home last night to tell him goodnight, I sang him Old MacDonald (one of our new favorites), he pitifully said ‘oh-oh’ after I did “e-i-e-i”, and Mary said he stuck his bottom lip out after that and started crying. She also said he wandered over to my side of the bed and patted it, looking around for me. Let me tell you just how hard that is. Well, some of you probably already know.

We all need breaks, but I also feel like part of me is missing. It’s like leaving home without your car keys, wallet, phone, shoes, and half your clothes, only ten times stronger. After the intense, day-to-day life at home, I realize I don’t know how to switch it off.

I say I worry about how he’ll handle all the normal away-from-home anxiety he has without us around. We’ve never tried it before. In all likelihood, that’s my way of making an excuse for my own feelings. I’ve gone mental about leaving him and my worry about how he’ll handle it is just a good excuse. I’m just going to be one of those parents, and I’m alright with that. It’s a learning curve, that’s all.

Since typing in this tin can of a plane is like trying to line dance in a closet, it’s time to wrap this up. Expect a “holy crap, I miss my kid!” post at some point on the next leg of the journey. Otherwise, we’ll be quiet for a few more days.

All that said, we’ll have even more joyous celebrating to do in Seattle and I expect that will fill us again with a renewed sense of who we are as husband and wife as well as daddy and mommy. Given the stress of recent weeks, that may be exactly the best possible thing for us right now.

“I love you just as you are. I accept you as a blessing from God. I join with you today to be the partner of all my days, to be the mother of our children, to be the companion of my house; we shall keep together what share of trouble and sorrow our lives may lay upon us, and we shall hold together our store of goodness and plenty and love.

When our way becomes difficult, I promise to stand by you and uplift you, so that through our union we can accomplish more than we could alone. I promise to honor and care for you, to speak the truth to you in love, and to cherish and encourage your own fulfillment through all the changes of our lives. I will stand beside you in joy or in sorrow, in ease and in conflict, putting the commitment we make today above any obstacle that we may face.

This is my solemn vow.”

These are the vows I made to my wife almost six years ago.

In the midst of all the strains of all the effort all of us put forth for our children, reminding yourself of the vows you made to your spouse can help you reclaim some perspective - on this day in particular for me. We can give so much to our children and all the day-to-day administrivia of our lives that everything turns into effort. It’s easy to lose track of joy.

When you’re ear-deep in evaluations, preschool planning, therapies, preschools, research, reading, phone calls and e-mails, work, home therapies and activities, and God-knows-what-else, and then you lack enough sleep and energy to make sense of even half of it, it’s easy to assume marriage will just work itself out along the way.

This is not a healthy assumption. There’s a reason why the divorce rate for people with special needs children are so high. It’s very hard, very consuming work, and it’s easy to lose track of your relationship in the middle of it. This is one of the essential parts of Mother’s Day they tend to forget on the cards.

Today, I give eternal thanks that I was able to marry my best friend in all the world to be the mother of our perfect little boy, and that together we have been given all the gifts and joys he brings to our life together.

I give even more thanks for the joy she brought to my life before he was born, and how that joy has multiplied each day since.

When I see her hold him, I get goose-bumps - every time. I see him kiss her and I know everything is right with the world.

I would also be remiss if I did not celebrate the fact that 2 1/2 years ago, this Wonder Woman gave birth ‘the old-fashioned way’ to a 9 lb 4 oz, 21 1/2″ long, 99.99th percentile head-sized boy. After he was out, she did everything but jump on the table and flex her biceps. I’m still in awe.

Today I commit to work harder to not be an ass so much of the time.

Today I vow to do a better job remembering that we are literally three-in-one, that you are the partner of all my days, the mother of our children, the companion of my house. I will stand beside you in joy or in sorrow, in ease and in conflict, putting the commitment we make today and every day above any obstacle that we may face.

This is my solemn vow.

We are a very kind and gentle family towards each other in general. We are polite towards each other – we drop “pleases” and “thank yous” around here like they are nothing. If we disagree, we try to discuss the issue rather than scream at each other (although sometimes the discussions can get heated!). Right now, we aren’t being as kind and gentle toward each other. We’re sniping and being sarcastic during the day, although at night when we lie in bed and talk, we are very sensitive to the other’s needs.

As I have mentioned, I read a lot. I’m re-reading old favorites – books that I know will comfort me. I know where the hard parts of the stories are, and I can easily skip to the good parts. How I wish that life could be like that sometimes. I’m sure everyone does.

Right now, I’m re-reading Betsy’s Wedding* and have gotten to the place where Betsy is writing her Rules for Married Life. “Always, always, be gentle and loving. No matter if you’re tired or feeling cross.” That’s something we have to remember right now.

It’s very easy to let ourselves take out our anger and frustration on each other, and I’ve decided I will not let that happen.

(*Betsy’s Wedding is the final book in the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. They are books describing a girl growing up in an idealized early 1900s Minnesota. They are wonderful escapism if you like “happily ever after” types of books.)