On Weekday Mornings

I write to remember: Weekday Mornings.

5:30—Wes wakes up to embrace the quiet with a cup of coffee, and he reads, catches up with finances and selectively socializes (aka social media).

6:20—He comes into the bedroom, turns off the air conditioner, pulls the covers away, and gently rubs my back until I waken. Apparently I have a series of grunts and groans in my lucid state. I reach for him to pet his arm. Sometimes he’ll come into bed with me for a cuddle; if we're short on time, he'll slowly raise my body upright. With the latter, I typically collapse back into bed. I hate waking up. 

6:30—I'm finally out of the room. I climb onto his lap. Right now I have a growing belly, and this stage of our morning will possibly be eliminated for sometime, maybe indefinitely once we have a little one vying to be held by him too. I embrace him jealously.

6:30.42 because I am heavier with baby—I get off his lap. 

6:31—I drink his coffee. He already anticipates this. We stopped caring about whose coffee mug is whose—cat mug, Nepalese mug, mugs with identifying initials... I'll end up drinking some of his anyway. I only need a few sips.  I scroll through my phone.  Wes tries to tell me his new stellar financial plan that will pay off our debt in 6 months, afford baby's college tuition, and gift himself with a Toyota Tacoma AND a Ferrari 458... or bankrupt us indefinitely and we die of scurvy.  I smile tenderly, "Nope, not now, booger."

6:40—I prepare my lunch. If I was smart, I already took care of that last night. I'm not usually this smart. Wes always makes himself available: if it's a sandwich, he's already heating up my lunch meat. If I'm running late, he's cutting up my fruit. If I'm EXTRA late, he puts my lunch in my bag with extra snacks. If he doesn't know what's happening, he'll ask me, "What can I do to help?" I am probably spinning in circles when he asks me this. I quite literally mean spinning in circles.  "Wellps, I guess you're eating at 7-11 today," he says.  I concur.

6:48—The worst timing. I probably HAVE to go to the bathroom (for a while, if you know what I mean). "Pray for me!" I blurt out as I dash to the bathroom. "Godspeed!" He yells back.

6:53—I still don't know what to wear to work today. Wes says the yay or nay to color schemes. I can't fit my pants, or I forgot to iron something, or I forgot to shave during last night's shower. I hate wardrobe decisions.

6:57—Still don't know what to wear to work today. A load of tried-but-“no” backwards shirts and pants and empty hangers cover the freshly-made bed. "Hey.. hey.. hey!" Wes tries to interrupt my frantic and scurried thoughts, but fails. He gets a hold of my shoulders and looks me straight in the eye. "I can see you panicking. STOP panicking. You'll get to work, even if I have to drive you there." He picks a cardigan that ties my outfit together. He gives me a kiss on my forehead and tells me to breathe. I give myself a second to pause and kiss him back.  He's so nice to me.

6:58—I flurry trying to lock the back door and shut off the electronics. "Never mind, it'll turn off automatically!" he says. "Not the coffee pot!" I say, trying to reclaim my analog dignity. His smart home changes make me feel less human.  My spastic state reminds us both that I am human.

6:59—He picks out my shoes.

7:00—I dash downstairs while Wes locks up the apartment and unlocks the car from above. I hurry inside and quickly put on eyeliner before he comes in and gets the car moving. I forgot to tweeze my eyebrows.

7:01—We head for the bus stop. We wish it was 6:55. But it's not. And somehow this routine repeats on the daily.

7:02—We're driving. He holds my hand. And I love him more every morning.

7:04—We hope for pedestrians at strategic intersections to block the flow of traffic as we turn. We also look for human landmarks, like the lady at the bus stop who always looks so well-put together, sometimes she has a fan, sometimes she has sunglasses, but she always has makeup. And 5 bags at her feet. "What up, landmark!" We both weirdly say in unison.

7:05—We are running out of time.  "ECO: OFF," Wes yells at no one.  In a Fast and Furious world, the closest we'll come to turbo with our base model Honda Fit is to turn the Econ-mode off.  We're hopeless.

7:06—Wes: “Check the Bus app.” “7:12,” I say, not looking at my phone. “Are you sure?” He doubts. I bring out my phone and look anyway. “7:12,” I say smugly. He shrugs.

7:08—Wes gets annoyed at people who slow down as they merge onto the freeway. “God bless America!” he exclaims, and then proceeds to instruct the masses on how to drive.  He is fond of yelling at no one.
 
7:10—We're stopped at a red light.  My hands are sweating.  “Stop panicking,” he says. Naturally, I’m still panicking.

7:12—Two scenarios happen: either we have a second to park and I tell him "thank you and have a good day at work and I love you more than anything," or the likelier scenario, I action-movie jump out of the moving vehicle OKLOVEYOUBYE-littlehug-littlekiss-BIGHUG-littlekiss and head dive into the bus before the closing doors bite my ankles off.

I love remembering this. I love remembering the little routines. I love remembering the little beginnings, the way we begin our day, the way we began our marriage. And I hope I always remember these beginnings with a fondness for what made our marriage beautiful to us: beginning with loving each other in the middle of the frantic moments. Beginning with laughter even while I'm panicking.  Beginning with gentleness and affection. Beginning with grace.


7:14—I start to doze on the bus.  I wake up when he texts me he's back at the apartment, or I get a notification from the stupid non-analog smart home. 

We miss each other already.

xo

PS. Analog over digital 4ever.  Except this blog I guess...

On First Reactions

You can't take back first reactions. Especially if you're like me and have a face as honest as a mirror.

I already knew I was pregnant, and so did Wes (the hormones do not lie, people!). But there was a strong resistance to seeing it on paper (read: on a stick). We had just made seven months of marriage, still trying to figure out how to merge our daily lives, still trying to understand a life of love and sacrifice, and the lines between introvert alone time, and being together forever. By no means is it a perfect marriage, but it's our marriage, and it's our story. And I didn't want to let go of the time when "our family" meant just the two of us: killing time wandering every aisle of the grocery store but walking out with just coffee creamer, being lazy on Saturday morning making omelettes and watering the plants and watching animal documentaries, having people over on a weeknight whim to play Settlers of Catan, drinking wine and eating stovetop popcorn. I fell in love with our small but meaningful life. Like a dream, it was a little weird, often nonsensical, at times frightening, but coated in bliss. I didn't want to wake up. I didn't want to open my eyes. I didn't want to look at that stick.

Wes wanted to. He wanted to get the inevitable out of the way. "When you gonna find out, when your water breaks? When you think you're 'peeing yourself' and a baby falls out?" But he'd also ask me to take the test at incredibly inopportune times—before a family gathering, before church, before meeting up with friends. "I can't pee on a stick and look my family in the face 15 minutes later!" I know me. I can't take back first reactions. I can't fake the feelings.

A Monday holiday came, and I had no excuse. No one to see for another week, besides work. And I already had a pregnancy test on hand (thanks to bridal shower gag gifts). "Just get it done, babe," he'd urge. I whined with resistance as Wes drug me to the bathroom. His nonchalance to the matter might as well have been a heavy pat on the back, "Get on the field, slugger!"

Unnecessary descriptive paragraph: the test wasn't one of those pee on a stick deals. Nope, you pee in a cup and use a fancy dropper to dispense your goods into a little tester. But with no disposable receptacle in our home, the cleanest vessel was an empty jar of Better Than Bouillon, lined with a ziploc bag (classy way to pee, I know). I didn't want to see the results alone. We set up the test so the lid of the bouillon jar covered the results. I waited for him to finish showering--the longest 8 minutes of my life.

"This is it," we thought out loud, looking at the bouillon lid that separated us and our future, thinking of all the meals we made with that bouillon. Thinking of when "our family" was just the two of us. "This changes everything." This changes the way we make decisions. The way we operate in community. The amount of sleep we get, the places we choose to live, the way our resources are used. We're don't have control of the parts of ourselves that replicate into the next generation. We don't get to choose what this person will be like. We only get to choose a name. Oh the pressure.

Like ripping a bandaid, we interrupted our thoughts and lifted the lid—

You can't take back first reactions. I melted in Wes' arms, trembling, facing away from the results--which also meant that the results were all HE had to stare at. "You're going to be a dad," I whispered. "You're going to be a mom," he said back softly. And with that, I buried my face into his chest and wept. "I'm so.... scared,” I sobbed.

I’ve heard people say that in a near-death experience, their whole lives flashed before their eyes. And in this new life experience, our whole future flashed before my eyes—and it was blurry. I could see shapes and colors and movement, and I couldn’t grasp it because I couldn’t tell how far away or how close I was. I could see small vignettes of fears and anxieties and questions, and they blended together into more sobs and cries, “I’m so, so scared.” But in my mind, as distorted as my vision was, the sound of a newborn baby’s cry was sharp and endearing.. and I suddenly wanted to comfort it. “You’re going to be a mom,” Wes whispered.

A few Sundays before that moment, our pastor preached about the fear of the Lord. Inasmuch as God can be terrifying, the fear is a reference to awe and wonder, the kind of awe and wonder that makes one aware of His glory and simultaneously indebted to His greatness. With breath returning to my lungs after minutes of crying, this is the fear I had. Wonder of the unknown, concurrent with the awe and yearning to meet this unknown. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, then the fear I feel about this pregnancy is the beginning of an uncharted journey towards finding and knowing and loving God in an absolutely brand new way.

Maybe my first reaction was to be scared, and I can’t take that back. But I’m making my second reaction courage, and my future reactions joy. Wes is going to be a dad. I’m going to be a mom. We’re having a little one. And we’re waking up from our dreams to find out that life is still a little weird (and gets even weirder), often nonsensical (and full of laughter), at times frightening (and never hopeless), but coated in bliss (and undoubtedly, baby poop).

There is new life within me, two fold; God had a dream, and placed it in a second beating heart inside of me.

Our first ultrasound

xo