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    Sunday, October 28, 2007

    I'm In Here

    To my husband Greg...

    I'm in here, I promise. I know the sweet, skinny, charismatic, fun-loving, sassy-yet-classy girl you married has been replaced with this oft-grumpy, almost-never-flirty, frumpy, middle-aged, pudgy "wife", and you probably spend most days thinking you got the world's biggest bait-and-switch. It's a wonder you come home every night.

    But I promise, I'm in here. I still love you in all the ways I loved you when we were dating, and now love you in all new ways, as well. Your eyes still make me feel weak in the knees, but one of those knees generally has a baby hanging on it when I would have previously thought to mention it to you. My arms still want to hold you all night long, but there is almost always at least one little person between us in the bed. My quiet moments of the day that used to afford me the time to think about you, and us, and all the things I love about who we are together are now filled with worry about how we'll do better for our kids than we had, how we'll get the house flipped and sold, how I'll get those boxes in the laundry room sorted out, whether or not I've done any laundry today (almost always, NO), did I write down Jackson's first tooth in his baby book, will Samantha ever say her "r"s right, and how long is it REALLY OK to breastfeed a toddler?

    I know you understand, and I know you are in "parent mode" all the time, too, which is why you bust your ass every day at a job you don't hate but don't love, and work overtime even though you're tired, and always try to do what I want in making decisions about our life. But I sometimes wonder if you lay in bed at night, missing the girl who stood before you and God and promised that there would be no road too long.

    There still isn't, you know. There is no road too long. I would lay down my life for you, for these kids, and would give every last breath in my body to defend you, to protect you, and to show you how much I love you, and how much you mean to me.

    And I'm still the same girl here as I was back there at the beginning. Our priorities have changed, and the package is certainly different, but the girl you fell in love with is still in here. I am trying to get out, to get back to you, to us, in the way that we used to be. I am trying, and I know you can see small glimpses of me now and then. Once in a while, the mom hat comes off and I get to just relax, joke with you, talk without preschooler-know-it-all-intervention; and I even sometimes feel like that girl who carried lilies and roses and baby's breath to the altar where she stood and made promises that she meant with every fiber of her being.

    So please don't give up on me. Know that I still see you with the same eyes as I did before the kids, before the move, before the debt. Please keep fighting for more time and space for our marriage to keep growing. Please don't stop waiting for me to come out and play. Please don't stop encouraging me to be just "Cathy" once in a while, because I deserve some time for me, and you deserve some time FROM me FOR you.

    You're the best man I know. It was true the first time I said it to you a million years ago, and it's true today. You are my sweet baboo, my baby, my babies' daddy, the love of my life and my best friend. I know our marriage is solid, and our future is together, but I wanted to tell you that, even if it doesn't feel like it some days, I still adore you.

    3 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    That is so sweet! Has he seen that???

    Jill

    Deb said...

    Oh. That's just so perfect.

    Anonymous said...

    Eyes welling....