We’ve reached an age in our marriage when we abort arguments mid-sentence and allow the children to bring us correction. These are the good old days.
A friend kept the kids overnight and while my husband and I did get out for a fancy dinner, I think my favorite part was going to sleep at 9:30pm and then drinking my coffee in bed the next morning, watching both the sun rise and him taking photos of it from the balcony.
We are learning, he and I, that our preteen daughters need simple sentences and not lectures. Eye contact, not a stern voice. Heavy silence, not an earful. It’s difficult and it’s working.
It must work, because we don’t have anything else and these girls have got to make it to eighteen years of age one way or another.
And on this, the first day of a new month, I had a hard time recovering from the last.
I cleaned my room and visited with my family but mostly, I lay in bed.
Eventually, Chris dragged me out and dressed me and took me on a date.
Not my best day, but not a bad one either.
There will come a time when all three daughters and the husband will audition for the local Nutcracker, and they will make the cast and your heart will swell with pride to three times its normal size. That time has come.
Party dad, Mother Ginger dancer, Mother Ginger, and young Clara are coming to a dance stage in December. Everyone’s invited.
More exciting, perhaps, than my daughters auditioning for our town’s Nutcracker ballet tonight was that my husband auditioned for our town’s Nutcracker ballet tonight. Although he’s spent decades on stage as a musician, he’s never dabbled in dance or theater and his inner child has been looking forward to this since we attended the ballet last year. My favorite part of today: Chris driving all over town to secure a package of white t-shirts because he had to wear a white tee and black pants, per the packet…. only the packet was for the children, and Chris showed up to a gaggle of grown-ups in street clothes. He enjoyed himself nonetheless, and so we anxiously await the announcement of the cast list.
I kissed my husband long and slow tonight. Been figuring out that man’s lips for 17 years and 7 months, to the day. What a ride.