16 years

It's my 16th wedding anniversary today. 

I'm spending it alone. Well, not completely alone. Knox is at home, wheezing and sounding a bit like Darth Vader with allergies while Abbott tries to lick the snot bubbles out of his nose. Bruce is away at work. I haven't seen him in six weeks. He's not scheduled to be home until sometime in June.

I don't spend a lot of time writing about my marriage, other than sharing jokes or silliness, because really, who wants to read that stuff? Certainly not my husband, his relatives or my children. Privacy and boundaries are important, even if they make for really crappy writing material.

But the other day someone remarked on twitter that they didn't know how Bruce and I do it. How we stay married when we are never together. I gave a flip remark, because what else is twitter for other than to hone the fine art of sass, but I've been thinking of that question ever since.

There is no easy answer really. When it boils down to it, like most every other married couple I know, I just like him best. He suits me the way no other person does and hopefully he feels the same way. 

Marriage isn't easy, ever, even under the best of circumstances. And my husband's and my marriage is no different. Add in the complications of marrying young, being poor, the death of a parent, the birth of a unexpectedly disabled child, the surprise death of said child, crappy extended family dynamics, a failed adoption attempt, a successful adoption attempt, teenagers, disabilities, health problems, every day stress and a job that takes you more than 600 kilometers away from your family for most of the year, well, marriage is tough. 

I have spent more than seven years blogging about how I am no longer the person I used to be when our son Skjel was alive. How I have used my words to find myself and my place in this world.

But I have never mentioned how my husband has changed. How the man I married no longer exists. How could he? For everything I've been through, so has he. He's been beside me for more than half of our entire lives. He bears the same scars I do from all of the same hurts. 

When I see my husband now, I don't see the optimistic idealistic boy with big dreams and great hopes I once married. I see a gentle spirited, patient, intelligent man who wears the same look of sorrow in his eyes that I have. It's easy to miss his hurt because he hides it behind a big smile and an easy laugh. But it's there. I see it.

I'm proud of the man the boy I married grew to become. And I'm so grateful he's been by my side through it all, even when we were at our lowest, teetering on the edge of total collapse. He's always been the one to yank us back to safety. He's never quit on us, when quitting would be the easiest thing to do.

So I'll happily spend our 16th anniversary alone, while trying to avoid getting slimed by Knox's snot bubbles. Because it doesn't matter to me how many days my husband and I spend apart. I know he'll always come home to us. To me. 

He's the roots of our family, the one that anchors and supports us through it all. 

Happy Anniversary Bruce. Come home soon. 

There's poop waiting to be picked up and I don't want to do it.

I love you.

Thumbs Down

I'm obsessed with thumbs. 

I can't stop worrying about my son's thumbs.

Especially his right one. It refuses to listen to me. It's stubborn and willful, defiant in it's rigid deformity. Every day and every morning, I take those thumbs, especially that right one and I hold it up to my lips and I kiss it. 

I whisper to the air around it, trying to coax it out of it's tightly held position and beg it to just open up. 

"Come on little piggy, you know you want to come to this market," I'll say. Right before stretching it wide open and holding my breath.

Did I break it?

Oh my god, I just broke my kid's thumb.

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

Oh wait. No. Nope. Not broken.

Damn it. It was almost there. 

STOP CLUTCHING THE THUMB.

And then the circle repeats itself. Everyday. 

I wrestle those thumbs into neoprene and metal splints. I have nightmares about those thumbs. 

Maybe it's not about my son's thumbs. Not really. Not any more than it is about his feet that are so rigid we can no longer get them in splints. Or hips so tight they dislocate themselves with a diaper change.

Those thumbs, those contorted disfigured little pieces of bone and tissue represent it all. More. Everything. 

My inability to control his health, his future. His siblings stubborn insistence on growing older and the fact that soon, too soon, my son will be raised in a household without any big brothers or sisters around to pester or annoy. Time slips by and I can't keep up or hold on. Everything is changing. Nothing ever changes.

Those thumbs are my dreams refusing to be crowbarred into reality and yet declining to evaporate into the ether of forgotten and lost hopes.

Two little difficult digits that refuse to bend the way I want them to, the way Knox needs them to. Instead they twist and grow, following their own inclinations and desires.

I'm powerless to reverse and prevent the damage, no matter how many times I try and force them into conformity.

Those thumbs, his sweet little thumbs are him. They are his siblings. They are me.

I'm weary from worrying about the thumbs.

I need a thumb-cation.

Swiping

It has been weeks since I did anything remotely resembling housework around our home. One plague-like infection after another rendered me useless for most of the past month. While the teens kept the house from falling into a state of slovenly disrepair, there were things they couldn't do.

Like grocery shop, file this year's taxes or sort through and file the mountain of paperwork I've ignored for the better part of the year all the while hoping it would just spontaneously catch fire so as I wouldn't have to deal with it. 

So I spent this past weekend doing all the things I've put off for far too long.

I went grocery shopping. In the city. On a Saturday afternoon. Because I am a masochist who enjoys fighting angry coupon clippers for the last pack of discounted toilet paper and spending hours standing in unmoving grocery lines.

My kids about wept with gratitude as they hauled in grocery bag after grocery bag of food supplies. 

"Ketchup! You bought us ketchup! I thought only rich people had over-processed tomato condiments! It's a miracle!"

"Bananas! We have BANANAS. I forgot bananas even existed!"

"THERE IS TOILET PAPER AND IT IS NOT THE SCRATCHY KIND!!"

Don't even ask me how they reacted when they realized I bought ice cream. Let's just say, my place as the world's greatest mother hall of fame is guaranteed for as long as the frozen treats and fresh produce last.

But I didn't just grocery shop this weekend. No. I cleaned a bathroom, attended a dance recital, folded laundry, helped Nash with his creative writing assignment, taught my daughter how to write her first cover letter so she could apply for a fancy internship thingamajig AND filed a year's worth of paperwork that had been sitting on my kitchen table, mocking me, for weeks now.

I know, I'm totally bragging. You are all awed and inspired by both my exciting life and unparalleled work ethic.

If only I had known just how truly fascinating my life would one day become. Sigh.

This weekend wasn't a complete wash, however.

While I was filing old tax returns and bank statements and medical reports, my kids wandered into my office (and by office I mean my itsy bitsy teeny tiny bedroom closet where I keep our filing cabinet, hidden beneath dusty dresses and a shiny burgundy suit my husband refuses to let me throw out) to ask me a question.

"Holy cow Mom. Enough papers!" Ken exclaimed as she saw the mess I had scattered about me as I ripped apart the filing cabinet.

"Thanks Tips. I hadn't noticed," I huffed as I tossed another stack of old receipts into the pile headed for the paper shredder.

"Wait, what is this?" Ken asked as she bent down to pick up a small rectangular piece of faded paper.

"What? Oh, that? That's an old credit card receipt."

"But why is it so odd looking?" She held it like it was contaminated and examined it as though it contained the answer to cold fusion.

"It's a swiper receipt. It's how they used to do credit cards."

"A SWIPER?" 

That's when I realized she had zero idea of what I was talking about.

"Ya, back in the day retailers had to make carbon copies of receipts, and there was no such thing as automatic approvals. If you were spending over a certain amount on your credit card the cashier had to pick up a phone, dial the bank and make sure you were authorized to spend that much. Lines were long and shoppers were grumpy. It was about as much fun as getting your teeth cleaned."

"Woah. How did everyone survive like that? It's so inconvenient," she asked EARNESTLY. Like the spoiled, technologically advanced 16-year old she is.

"It's a mystery, kid."

Ken dropped the old credit card receipt and it floated to the ground, another flake of history ready to be shredded with my past. 

I picked up the credit card receipt and looked at the date. 2002. 

I marveled at how much and how little the world has changed in eleven short years. Sure our technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. I can only marvel at what our world will look like in another eleven years.

But as much as that has changed, there will always be parent sitting in his or her closet, trying to organize a mountain of papers while their kid reminds them how obsolete and old they've become.

Thank God she never noticed my very first cell phone I had in the trash pile, buried underneath all the papers. If she saw that old brick, she'd never stop pestering me with questions about what life was like before the wheel was invented.