Recently in jason Category

Jason and I never really went on dates. At least not in the sense of him asking me out or me asking him out. We've always just mutually agreed on going somewhere and then doing it, but overall we are both homebodies. 

                                                                              photo by Heather

I remember being pregnant with River and sitting at the laundromat as I was often wont to do having no washer or drier and being a stickler for clean clothing. There was always a well thumbed stack of magazines on one of the side tables. The parenting and mothering and babies, babies, babies magazines were suddenly flip-able. I was soon to join the club of reproducing and raising young. Any first time mom is proud of her bulging gut--her membership card of a grotesquely enlarged uterus filled with fluid and blossoming life.

I was probably contently rubbing my belly as I read through a parenting magazine....that is until I read a disturbing article on how parenting does not make parents happy. In fact, studies of happiness before children verses after children showed that parents were depressed, stressed, over worked, and horribly unhappy after having children. Who wants to hear that when a baby is an incoming like a projectile missile? One that blows up in your face.

But life really can be split into two sections, B.C. and A.C. Before Child and After Child. Nothing is the same. You certainty will not be, can not be, will probably not even remember what it was like to not have a child but in the hazy dream-like quality of a day dream, a high, a crazy night on the town where you might have passed out in a parking garage.

Jason was telling me how fast we grew up and how completely we have changed since we had River. You can see the fault line clearly forming in the weeks after he was born. As my attention went from my husband to solely rest on my son and Jason became weighed down with the responsibilities of providing for a child and being yanked between that need and the need to be home with that same child. We circled River, occasionally crashing together, remembering to embrace to ask how the other person was doing, to really look at each other and see.

Children must be, hands-down, the hardest part of a marriage. Here you have created something you love more than anything else. You created it together because you love each other so much. You created this child from pure love and want nothing more than to continue to feed it with everything you are, have, can, should, and imagine you ought to. It's very easy to neglect the love that came first, the one that created the child. To go from being a partnership working together to two people working apart for the same cause. Occasionally raising tired eyes to a face that used to hold much more regard and thinking, "Ah, yes you. I forgot about you."


I'm the annoying optimist you want to throw things at. Shit, I used to despise optimists when I wasn't one--when I was a sour pessimist with a pin in hand waiting to pop my and others' balloons. But steadily I've been moving towards optimism--first forced, than tried on like shoes, then held onto like a raft when lost at sea. Bryan dying has made me a stronger person. Which seems horribly wrong, doesn't it? Unfair. Like dancing on someone's grave. But really think about it. It took that pain, that knowledge, this never ending hole that is his absence to make me look around and fiercely want to treasure what I have been given. I have something to prove. That something is that I want my grief to transcend myself. I want Bryan's death to mean more than pain and anger and a pointless waste. I want his death to move like ripples in a pond, through me, to make the world I touch somehow better. As if I could spread my love for him instead of letting it turn me inwards--to my own sadness. Because nothing so good should become so tainted because it has changed--a horrible, unfair, agonizing change, true. But love just the same.


So blame it on my optimism that I can look at my husband and assure him that things will get better and easier (and believe it). Believe that I embrace my moment in time because I know it will change and fade. My children will grow and I will miss those days when they cuddled in my arms, threw tantrums, pissed themselves in public, and cried with fever. I will miss this time, I know I will. Sometimes it is harder for Jason to feel that. He might know it, but he can't feel it as clearly as I can. He's more logical. More in the moment. More fixed in time.  

I don't believe that the changes we have gone through means love has changed. Though I am older and wiser and have experienced more of life, I am still that same girl who flung myself into my husband's arms shrieking every time he walked in the door. I can summon up those memories and feel what I felt then and in that way I still am then.

I feel like time if fluid. That my memories make that so. That somewhere I am nineteen kissing Jason till my lips feel raw. That somewhere my brother is jumping off the roof into the pool while my mother isn't home--against her orders not to ever do that again. That somewhere my father and mother stare down at my newborn face until their necks ache.

I believe that there is usually some seed of good, of great, of grand amidst all the crap that might of spawned from it. If I can remember that, I can move on with faith that more good things are to come.

And I know they are.

Do you?

My sister (mother of two boys) warned me that there would come a point in time when River would prefer his father. I can see that happening even now and I am thrilled by the way their relationship is changing. Once Jason walks in that door, I might as well not exist. It gives me a bit of a break. Time to finish chores, fix dinner, read a chapter, or work out. If Jason sits to check his email, River is on his lap. If Jason is walking, River follows. Once River is done eating dinner, he wants into his father's lap. Sometimes we can convince him to sit beside Jason to give the man a little freedom to finish his own food.

This change is coming just when I need more freedom. I can't wrestle or spin, or toss River the way I used to. Not only is he heavier but it is properly unwise to let a toddler trample on his growing sibling. So now I tell him that those are things he has to do with Daddy. I'm often too tired to chase him too and the reality is that I won't be able to much longer.  I regulate more and more activities to Daddy. Naturally, we're all making a space for the new baby. Freeing my arms and my time for a second child. I'm, frankly, relived.

I can remember a time when Jason would hold up River in the bathroom to stop his crying. He had to watch me take a shower. Mommy was not allowed out of site under any circumstances. I would get so frustrated by all the time and touch committed to River, especially when he was sick and lived on my chest.

I have no problem with sharing the cuddles.

It isn't as if River likes me less. This morning he touched my cheek and said, "Mommy, I like you." and I told him the same. We said this back and forth several times cuddling together. I still usurp Daddy when River is sick. I'm still home base in many ways, but I prefer to share the limelight in parenting--anytime.


Each morning River asks, "Mommy, where'd Daddy go?"

"Where did he go River?" I ask, turning the question around as desired.

"Daddy's at work with Heather"


I can't talk about Daddy through the day without a fierce interruption. "No. No, Mommy. Daddy at work with Heather."

But today I told River we'd go to the play ground after Sesame Street and he said, "And Daddy go too?"

"Daddy can't go. He's not home."

"I know. Daddy come home soon?"

"No, Daddy will be home soon after nap. We'll go for a walk with him then. Just Mommy and River will go to the play ground soon."

"No, Daddy too."

"You want Daddy to come home now so we can go to the park?"

"Yes, I like to. Daddy help me at play ground."

I think the first year I remembered our anniversary. It went something like this--

"Hey, we've been married a year?"

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's January 3rd."

"Cool. Happy Anniversary."

"Happy Anniversary"

Every year since, Jason and I mutually have forgotten to acknowledge or even nod our heads in notice towards the yearly anniversary of the day we married. This year, regaurdless of this post, is no exception. Because my blog has been down, I did not get to write this post until several days later.

What makes this all the more horrible is that on New Years day we remembered and remembered that we usually forgot. Then somewhere over the two days that followed the special date, obviously of little significance to a laid-back couple like ourselves, once again was forgotten. Only two days later, when another couple we know were celebrating their anniversary, did I recall that ours had already been gathering dust for the new year.

Woops.

I'm afriad this will be our last anniversary since the man I have loved dearly has commited a grevious sin....upon his face.

I never agreed to marry a 'stache. Once in a while the dreaded 'stache has made its way onto Jason's face. My running away, shrieking and swearing I will never touch him as long as that monster resides above his upper lip--has always had the beast quickly shaved away.

Maybe it is the impending second round of fatherhood or my insane mood swings and moaning about my sore boobs and incessant hunger...but Jason is stubbornly keeping that THING upon his person.

I grow life. He grows funky facial hair?

We had a good five years, Jason and I. I hope he's happy with that 'stache! 

I do remember...

 

Nineteen, a freshman in college. You were twenty-two. We look like babies.

 

It's almost been eight years...can you believe it? Eight years of loving and bickering and helping me clean up my kitchen accidents.   

This was your first pumpkin!

Seeing you with our son, is the most wonderful sight in the world. It fills me up to my eyeballs with joy.

Almost eight full years together and five years married this winter. Speaking of marriages, I still don't remember our marriage celebration well.

Celebrating our marriage  with family and friends. I was drunk.

I love you so, husband o' mine!

He called me up, sounding quite pleased with himself, for figuring out why I get so worried over baby. He ended the conversation by saying that he understood and I talk to him anytime about my worries no matter how often I am getting my worry on about the same damn thing over and over again. Which is absolutely precious and much needed for my sanity.

I should be feeling baby move soon and that will just put my mind at ease.