On The Importance Of Knowing What You Really Want

February 5th, 2005

"The cool thing about you is, you're like an older woman." Aaron says this to me over dinner one night, back when we were still dating. "Um, how exactly am I like an older woman(I was 21), and why is that cool?" I ask. "Because you know what you want and you don't play games," he answers, clearly satisfied that he's paid me such a great compliment. "Ah. Thanks. I guess." I didn't really feel like what he was saying was a compliment at the time, and, as a few years of marriage would teach us, it wasn't entirely true. I definitely thought I knew what I wanted, but I turned out to be lying a lot of the time. Fast-forward about a year. We are living in our Tiny Stinky Apartment, and Jack is teething. I've been giving him Motrin. Aaron expresses concern that Jack seems to be spitting up more than the usual amount lately, and wonders if the Motrin is irritating his stomach. I calmly assure him that I've been alternating Motrin with doses of Tylenol; Motrin is processed through your kidneys, Tylenol is processed through your liver. I further assert that one of my nieces used to projectile vomit(as opposed to spitting up normally) and she still grew round and chubby, so even though it looked like Jack was spitting up a lot I was certain he was still getting enough calories. "You know," Aaron says, "you say that kind of thing like you're absolutely certain you're right and there's no room for error, but you turn out to be wrong about 80% of the time." "Excuse me?" I splutter, so angry I can barely speak. I grew up in a family of nine, I have dozens of nieces and nephews, I was a nanny for eight years, did two years of nursing prerequisites in college, and I'd watched a lot of 'ER,' so naturally I resent my husband questioning my medical expertise. I get angrier and angrier, and very shortly it becomes clear to me that I am far more furious than the situation warrants. I excuse myself, saying I think I needed a time-out. I step outside and sit on the top of our steps, trying to get a little objectivity. A few days later I'm still so upset that I decide I want some professional counsel and I make an appointment with a therapist. I meet with her once a week and we discuss my marriage, my romantic history, my adolescence, my childhood; she asks very good questions, and I do my best to give honest answers. I can tell when we are really getting somewhere, because sometimes after she asks me a question I get really uncomfortable and I don't want to answer, but I do because I don't want to waste my time or poison my marriage. I work at it and work at it, and eventually it becomes clear to me that I have never in my whole life had a clue about what I really wanted. I thought I wanted to be smart, to be respected for having all the right answers. What I actually wanted was to be loved, but I'd been so busy trying to be right all the time that I didn't know I already had what I really wanted. Turns out, I don't have to be right all the time for my husband to love me. He does anyway, and he'll keep loving me no matter how often I'm wrong. Which is a lot. The summer I got pregnant with Jack, two of my siblings separated from their spouses. My oldest sister decided after five kids and fourteen years of marriage that she would really rather be single, so she left. She lives in another state now and I haven't heard from her in years. She got married when she was nineteen and had her first baby at twenty. She was young and in love, and for the first several years of her marriage everything appeared to be great. She married a very nice man who loved her, earned a solid living, and their kids were cute. But somewhere along the road, something in her started to break down. She gained weight. She watched a lot of TV and didn't leave the house much. She started drinking and gained even more weight, which eventually led to a cycle of rehab and relapse. Whenever she went to rehab(which was pretty often), I watched her kids so her husband could work. The days were long and intense as I attempted to fill in for a mother who'd been absent for a lot longer than she'd been physically gone. This went on for two or three years until she finally left for good, and by that time I'd decided I never wanted to have kids. It just looked way too hard, and the stakes were so high if you screwed it up. Five little boys, the youngest only four, were left without a mother. I still don't really understand what happened to my sister; maybe she's crazy, maybe she's ill, maybe she's wicked. Maybe all three. For a long time, I hated her. Loathed her. Then I felt sorry for her. Today, as Aaron and I celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary, I'm grateful to her. It may sound like an odd thing to say, but I really mean it. I only have two boys(for now), yet I've had days when I thought I would go stark raving mad if I had to change one more poopy diaper or settle one more fight. Motherhood can be incredibly exhausting; it is constant, unrelenting work that often demands everything of you and never says 'thank you,' just tortures you through the night so you don't get any restoration and then you have to drag yourself out of bed and do it all again the next day. And the next. And the next. For years. So why am I grateful to my sister? Because she showed me what not to do, and otherwise I might not have known. And I feel sorry for her because I don't think she ever knew what she really wanted either. I don't think she really wanted to be married. I think she wanted love, attention, excitement, and change. Marriage can give you those things, but it's a really bad plan to get married because you hope to get something. There's a lot of giving involved, and she didn't like that part. So she took and she took, and she still didn't get what she wanted. In the meantime, she had a lot of kids, and life got harder and harder. To this day, I doubt she knows what she actually wants. Had someone asked her at nineteen where she hoped she'd be in 19 years, I highly doubt she would have described her current situation. It probably wasn't what she wanted, but she got it anyway. The big surprise was that I didn't actually not want children. What I wanted was to do it differently, to not force myself into a role I wasn't certain I wanted and then make all kinds of restrictions about how I had to do it. I make an effort everyday to know what it is I really, really want. Some of the things I want are good, and it's helpful to be in touch with those desires so I can make a plan to achieve them. Some of the things I want maybe aren't so good, and it's really helpful to be in touch with those desires so I can try to figure out what in my life or heart is out of alignment and needs to change. I still enjoy being right, when it happens(which, despite what my husband says, is more than 20% of the time). But I enjoy being loved a lot more. If you're not honest about what it is you really want, you're never going to get it. If you really want to be married and have kids, you need to accept the reality that it will require you to work your ass off every day. If you don't want to do that, you don't really want to be married. The good news is that when you know what you really, really, really want, getting it is really satisfying. I'm going to get off my soapbox now because my husband just walked in with groceries and flowers. We're going to put the boys to bed early and then cook dinner together. Later we'll sit by the fire and drink wine, and talk about how we want to be married for a long, long time. This is what I want. This man. To be married to him, to grow with him, to learn, to change, make babies, and get old and wrinkly.

Four, Three, Two, One

Four years, three different home addresses, two healthy boys, one happy marriage. Yesterday was our fourth wedding anniversary, and we celebrated by going out to dinner while the boys played at Grandma and Grandpa's. Over dinner at The Met, we shared our experience of the past four years and it was interesting to see that we sometimes had very different impressions of the same experience. For example, Aaron said he has really fond memories of our first apartment, while that stage of our life together was definitely the hardest for me. Jack was a cranky newborn, always angry, always screaming, never content. I'm so relieved that he has grown into such an amazing little boy, and there are so many things that make him happy. Lately, the beach makes us all happy. We've taken advantage of every sunny day this week, heading to the beach right after school. We've hit a different beach each day, but each one is pretty much a boys' paradise; train trucks run along each one, so while we're playing in the sand and throwing rocks we get to watch a train go by.

Matteas is offering me a spoonful of sand. He is nothing if not generous.

Jack recently discovered the power of rain boots and loves to wade through the streams and tide pools while relishing the security of his dry feet.

Matteas doesn't love his rain boots as much, and I recently cut the tops off to give him a little more flexibility. My attempts to keep him dry at the beach have mostly been futile, but luckily he doesn't seem to mind. I, however, do mind when he decides to run full-tilt into Puget Sound in the middle of winter. I didn't get to him quite in time the other day and he made it into the water up to his ankles before I grabbed him, and I thought the feel of the water would give him pause. No such luck; no sooner had I plucked him from the chilly water than he turned around and ran right back again, not the least bit discouraged by the cold water but very angry with his mother for ruining his fun. I admire his bravado, but I sort of wish he would develop a sense of his own limitations. Namely, the fact that he can't swim. I have to pack extra clothes for Matteas anytime we go to the beach. I was really pleased with myself for bringing the pants he's wearing because they're quilted and lined with flannel so they're extra-warm; ten seconds after I took this picture, Matteas sat down on the wet sand. I keep telling myself that if it doesn't bother him it shouldn't bother me, but I know he'd let himself get dangerously cold before he'd complain if he thought it meant leaving the beach. I'm really looking forward to summer when I can actually let him get wet for a while, and he'll be a little more stable on his feet. I've been really loving the stage the boys are in lately, which is part of the reason I haven't been blogging much; I've been too busy enjoying my kids. Back in the days of Jack's constant screaming or the early stages of my pregnancy with Matteas, when I'd lie on the couch too nauseous to move and Jack wreaked havoc on the house, I kind of figured things had to get better. Other mothers assured me that it would, but it was hard to conceive of anything different than my own personal experience. In my experience, motherhood was hard and mostly unrewarding. Rather than feeling like I was working hard at something I wanted to do, I felt like motherhood was what kept me from doing all the other things I wanted to be doing instead. I remember the feeling of impending doom while I was pregnant with Matteas; it was a really rough transition for Jack and there were many, many days when I would just show up at Briana's and ask her through my sobs how the hell she had four children and wasn't insane. Then Matteas was born, and the instant the midwife put his warm little body in my arms I was deeply impressed with his sweetness. Helping Jack through his feelings of displacement was pretty hard for the first six months or so, but then he just seemed to grow up. He became reasonable, and I found I could do things like take both boys to the grocery store by myself and shop without any incidents. Matteas is now a year and-a-half, and the boys' friendship continues to deepen. If one cries, the other(assuming they haven't caused the tears) comes running to hug and comfort the injured. They have common interests, like the beach and the library and playing with cars and trains. It's been especially rewarding to help Jack grow up, and while as an infant absolutely nothing satisfied him, there's now a long list of things we can choose from that he loves to do. He loves to cook with me, and we've been making our own alphabet cookies. We still have our cranky days, but most of the time I can identify what went wrong(not enough sleep, too much sugar, no outdoor playtime) and do better the next day. Now, instead of wishing I could do other things, I find myself turning down opportunities to go out so that I can be home with my family. Especially now that we have some rhythm to our days, I find my days with my boys satisfying and fulfilling. Some of the best days are days like the ones pictured above; I'd made dinner while Jack was at school, so after we got cold and wet at the beach we came home and had a hot dinner and warm baths. Good, good times. Thank you Aaron, love of my life, for a wonderful(albeit challenging) four years and two amazing little boys. I'm looking forward to more. Of everything.

February 5th, 2005

February 5th was our third wedding anniversary. Jack spent the night at Grandma's house, Aaron came home from work early, and we got lobster juice and chocolate frosting everywhere. I love this picture of Aaron; I think his eyelashes are so cute. And his sideburns.

I made a cake for dessert that was a miniature version of our wedding cake, only I made it with chocolate frosting. It was a recipe from Cook's Illustrated, a Christmas present from Tristan that is quickly becoming one of my favorite resources.

Trudy Wheeler(Briana's Mother-in-law) made our wedding cake. I sent her a picture of a white cake with rose petals on it, and this is what showed up at our wedding. It doesn't look very big in the picture, but it was at least two feet high. Amazingly, it was not only stunning to look at but it was also the most delicious cake I've ever had. People called me after our wedding to ask if they could have some of the leftovers. The top part never made it to the freezer for our first anniversary.

With a small nursing baby, dates are sort of out of the question. So to keep things exciting we do date nights at home, and for special occasions we have just one rule: we cook something together that neither of us has made before. Inspired by Central Market, we chose lobster. She weighed almost three pounds and was thrashing around vigorously when removed from her tank, flapping her tail so loudly it sounded like someone slapping two pieces of wood together. We were a little afraid to try stuffing her into our biggest pot as she seemed too long for it, and it seemed wise not to anger her unless she was going to perish in a timely fashion. The idea of being chased around the kitchen by an angry, red-hot lobster seemed like it would spoil the romance. Aaron came up with the idea of using our next-biggest pot as the lid, which worked beautifully save for the fact that it dripped lobster juices all over the stove. She was delicious.

Since we were sharing the lobster we thought we should round out our meal a bit so we made Steak au Poivre, roasted new potatoes and French green beans sauteed with shallots.

Here is my miniature wedding cake with chocolate frosting. I thought white frosting would have been prettier with the red roses, but once I put it all together I think the brown and red are a pretty swell combination. It was very, very good. The first ingredient the frosting recipe called for was 2 1/2 sticks of butter.

I thought the inside was pretty too.