The middle child

Published May 2, 2011

 

The picture above is not entirely fair to Sander: We were playing with the camera and I asked him to pose with his grumpy face. 

But it’s not the only picture I have of him like that, and not all of them were posed. And it is what he looked like most of today.

First, let me say this: I believe that it is my job to defend my children to the death. It is my job to place them first, and to make sure no one, ever, anywhere, talks smack about them.

Because for God’s sake, if it’s not my job to protect them from bullies and morons and predators and teachers who don’t think they’re perfect, than what I am here for?

I also believe that a parent’s job is to make the well-being of their kids priority number one. 

Having a nice house can’t come first, a good career can’t come first, and whatever goals you have as a human being can’t come first. 

Notice that I didn’t say that the child’s whims and wishes and hopes should be your top priority. Just their well-being.

Because if a parent doesn’t place their child’s needs (not wants, remember,) as their first priority, then who the hell will? 

Who’s looking out for your child? 

There is no one else on the planet who will put this tiny creature’s needs as a top priority.

That said:

I’m not sure Sander’s going to make it to his seventh birthday.

As I have said, I have no problems praising Sander. 

He’s brilliant. Funny. Can be incredibly sweet and kind and has such an empathic, nurturing side that it makes me think I’ve done something right.

And yet every wonderful, amazing thing about him is turned into a weapon against me if the stars aren’t lined up just right.

He is sensitive.

Great. 

This means he will get laid in college. 

Bully for him.

In practice, right now, this means that he can’t function unless he’s fed, he’s at the right temperature and he’s had enough sleep. 

And God forbid someone’s said the wrong thing to him that day. He’s worse than a drag queen after a bad breakup: “No, I will NOT listen to you. You were mean and I don’t want to be around you and I won’t listen to you today!”

He’s brilliant. Terrific.

He’ll actually pass his classes when he’s not getting laid. 

In practice, right now, this means that he is capable of understanding much more than he’s capable of dealing with. 

And that he can pinpoint, with astounding accuracy, anyone’s weak spots.

And that he can remember everything you’ve ever said to him.

“But you said maybe, and I know that maybe is just another way of you saying no because you don’t want to fight with me over saying no, but I need you to either say no so I can know why not or say yes so I can stop asking you. So which is it? Can we go get a treat today? And if you say yes you have to promise so you can’t change your mind and if you say no then I have to know why so I can make you change your mind. And don’t forget you can’t say maybe.”

He likes adventure, and the outdoors, and constant movement and new things and new places.

Fabulous. He’ll be an explorer. He’ll travel the world.

In practice, right now, this means that after a week where we go to my aunt’s ranch, to Houston for three days, swim until we’re all exhausted, go on hikes, go to the zoo and come home with ten loads of laundry and a week’s worth of chores in order to recover, the next day he wakes up with, “So, what are we doing today? And don’t tell me we’re staying home, because that’s boring. It’s a beautiful day! Let’s go do something!”

He takes everything to heart. 

Everything is a big deal. Everything is important.

This is a wonderful thing. He’s serious and deep.

In practice, right now, it means that if I’ve told him we have to watch his baby sister all the time, that means we have to watch his baby sister all the time. 

Every freaking minute, or the Sander police come after you.

I can’t go to the bathroom and leave her outside the door, or the Sander police come up and yell, “Hey! There’s no one watching the baby!! She might swallow something!! Get out here now, you know a six-year-old can’t watch a baby!! Where are you?!”

I must wear my seat belt at all times. I must never have alcohol in front of my son, because he knows it’s bad for me. My room must be clean, or I can’t tell him to clean his. My clothing must be spotless and appropriate for the season, or I can’t tell him to change his shirt. I must not fucking curse in front of him, or I will hear about forever, and his father will hear about it, and so will my family.

The rules are the rules, you know.

And he will not bend.

Ever. He will not show weakness. He will not give in. And he has such pride and such vanity that he will not be mocked or teased.

And this, in practice, right now, is what’s going to kill us both.

A six-year-old child can not always be right. He must bend to the ways of the family around him. The world can not always bend to his whims.

And yet, usually, his strength of personality is so great that it usually does.

He wants to see a platypus, and so plans are in the works for a trip to Australia. He has a business watching people’s pets while they’re on vacation, complete with business cards. He has a couple hundred dollars saved up for this.

He wants to be a veterinarian. So he’s convinced everyone around him to read to him, night and day, about animals. The librarians know him by name and have new books set aside for him each week. He is sure of himself and friendly, and confident the world is on his side and out to help him.  

And so when anyone crosses him, he can’t imagine why they would be so foolish.

He likes to dress up; he’s still six years old. He likes capes and cloaks and magic wands, and his newest cool thing is to wear clothes that are the wrong size. He puts on Sawyer’s pants that fall down and wears a belt with them, or he squeezes into a pair of Scout’s sweat pants and waddles around the house laughing.

Today, he was tired. The stars were not aligned. He wanted to be entertained and catered to, and I was not in a catering mood. He wanted to be read to, and played with, or wanted me to come up with some interesting diversion for his royal highness.

I had errands to run. I was done with entertaining him. I wanted out of the house.

I told Sander I’d take him to lunch, to the library and to the store, and then we had to pick Sawyer up from school. Oh, and hurry up, because we’ve only got a couple of hours until we have to pick up Sawyer. Go get dressed, please.

So he came out to the living room waddling in a pair of Scout’s pants. She’s eleven months old. These were jeans that wouldn’t fit past his thighs. Cute, but annoying. 

Nope. Go get dressed for real. We’ve got to go.

He wouldn’t have it. He insisted that he was going to wear those pants, and that he was fine, and that they fit.

And here is where the diverging parenting strategies begin.

If I were cheerful, happy, and on top of my game, I could have done a number of things. Had a race to see who got to his room first to change his pants. Had Scout wear his pants so he could see how silly he looked. Grab an extra pair of pants so when we got to the car and he complained, he could change. Ignore the whole thing, let him deal with the fallout and let him not go to the library because he couldn’t waddle in.

But I was not cheerful, happy and on top of my game. I was tired of amusing him and catering to whims.

I told him I was going to the car, and he could come after he’d changed his pants. It was cold and rainy out, we had errands to do, and he had to be dressed to go.

Sander knows a challenge when he sees one.

“I’m not changing, and I can wear these pants if I want, and you can’t stop me, “ says he.

Fuck.

Now, instead of a day of errands, we have a face-off.

We have a full-blown pain-in-the-ass situation, where if I back down, the terrorists win. 

If I back down, I won’t be able to stop him. 

He will take this a personal weakness and will use it every day to his advantage.

However, if I don’t back down and I have to spend an hour making sure that he obeys me,  then I’m an idiot for setting myself up in a situation where a small child has now forced me to pay attention to him and to waste an hour of my day dealing with this.

I knew better. He’s done this before. He wanted my full attention, and now he’s got it.

At this point, the car is running, the baby is strapped in, it’s raining, and he’s outside, dressed in flip-flops, a dirty T-shirt and baby pants. Way to go, killer. 

“Go back in and change your pants,” says I, as the baby starts to cry because she’s pissed that she’s in the car and it’s not moving.

“Nope.”

And he climbs into the car and buckles in.

Fuck.

Now it’s a physical escalation. If I have promised that he can’t get in the car unless he changes his pants, I have to back down or take him out of the car. And I’m not backing down.

And I know that you can’t do physical escalation. In ten years, this kid will be six feet tall and sixteen years old. If I don’t figure this out now, there’s no way I’m going to be able to manhandle him into doing what I want then.

But I can now. So I pick him up, get him out of the car, kicking and screaming, and put him in his room, telling him to please change his pants. And yes, by this time, he and the baby are both screaming and yelling.

At some point, he does, in fact, change his pants. We did make it out of the house. And a mile down the road, he asked me to pull over so he could get in my lap and stop crying.

But he wouldn’t apologize. And when I tried to discuss what happened and how we could do better next time, he put chopsticks in his ears and said, “I refuse to talk about bad things.”

And we had to skip the library, because we ran out of time, and he threw a fit because I “broke a promise to go to the library, and now you need to get me a treat to make up for it.” 

So tonight, Mark put him to bed so I wouldn’t murder him.

And tomorrow, he will wake up sweet and happy and will want to know what adventures we’re going to have and how I will entertain him.

And tomorrow is Mark’s birthday, and because Sander is sweet and thoughtful, he will make a present and draw a picture and will want to make a cake and have a surprise for Mark.

But I will spend the entire day trying to avoid traps that leave me with no way to back down.

I’ve got to figure out how to work with this kid before he gets much older. 

Because if he’s this hard now, his teenage years are going to finish me off, right before all of those difficult traits turn him into an amazing man, and that would be a shame to miss.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Published February 14, 2009

I have two true loves, I’ve decided.

One isn’t enough. 

And you know, in Europe, they don’t expect your husband or wife to fulfill all your needs, or to be your everything -- and I don’t think they should be. I have two loves, for two very different needs, and I think that’s as it should be.

I adore my husband, and he loves me, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner through life. He’s my best friend, and a fabulous guy in general, and an amazing father. He’s funny, and he’s solid as a rock, and I never, ever have to worry about him.  I don’t worry about whether he loves me ( he does.) I don’t worry about whether he’s going to do what he says (he does. Always.) And I don’t worry about whether he comes home on time, or whether he’s going to call and see what’s going on at home, or still thinks I’m cute. He does.

But.

He’s a guy. A man’s man. A guy’s guy. He likes barbecue. His favorite meal is chocolate cake and beer. He couldn’t name three cheeses if you paid him. He. Will. Not. Go. Antiquing. Ever.

He likes Van Damme (or maybe it’s Van Diesel...)  movies and The Real World and Jackass! He does not always want to hear the drama in my family that goes back three generations and needs to be re-analyzed every three months or so to see where the latest psychotic breaks from reality in which family member are traced back to which trauma.

And he will not engage in long discussions about Harry Potter with me.

So. He does the laundry. He’s gorgeous to look at. Good in bed. Laughs at my jokes. Has no sense of smell, which is a huge plus if you have to sleep in the same room with my feet. Loves red hair and big curves (we’d be in trouble if he had a thing for skinny brunettes.)

Adores our kids. Listens to everything I say and takes me seriously. So all of his faults can be overlooked, but you know, sometimes I still need to talk about Hermione, dammit!

And this is where Christy comes in.

She loves antiquing. She will putter. She will discuss my mother’s trauma, and my sister’s quirks, and will remember why my sister has her quirks in the first place. She knows everyone in my family. I have known her since she was 18 and I was 22. Mark was the interloper in our relationship!

Christy is funny, and bright, and reads as much as I do, which is saying a lot.

She doesn’t mind me calling her four times a day to say, “Did you read this article?” and “My son is irritating me,” and “I wish I could take up heroin.”

She calls me, too, to say, “And what do you think about THIS?” or “I feel a rant coming on....”

And she finally has a baby, thank God, so she gets it.

She could name nine kinds of cheese in her sleep. She would not watch a Van Damme movie if you paid her.  And she has an ultra-developed, super-sense of smell, which made her a very, very bad match for my feet. We could not live together anymore, I don’t think. We’re too used to being in charge of a household. But man, I sure like to talk to her.

She will talk about Hermione’s parents and why there were in Australia, she knows about the Edward vs. Jacob controversy, and if you asked her why Elizabeth Bennet married Darcy, even after he dissed her family, she could tell you. Mark has no idea who Darcy is. None. And I’ve told him the story three times, at least.

Christy is frugal, sensible and tough. I am none of those things. She’s organized and efficient and she’s as smart as I am, which is also saying a lot.

So, to the two people who have traveled the furthest with me down this path so far, I wish you a very happy Valentine’s Day!

My latest obsession

Originally published February 11, 2009

I do actually have two children. It’s just that Sander’s the one who’s always demanding to be photographed...

He’s hiding here in a post hole, playing “Prairie dog,” in an ugly, barren stretch of clay and rock that I am determined to turn into a garden.

Three years ago, when we first moved in, I planted a garden. Then the deer ate it. So I planted another one, put up a better fence. Deer ate that one, too. Last year, same thing.

So this year I’m getting serious.

I have offered on Craig’s List one month’s worth of dinners to anyone who would come and put up a deer-proof fence.

I warned that the ground was solid rock, and that you’d need a jackhammer to dig a post hole, and that I really will suffer a nervous breakdown if I have one more tomato plant nibbled to the ground the night before the tomatoes are ripe.

Enter Sam. He’s young, good-looking, digs fence post holes for a living, and he’s hungry. He works all day and has no clue how to cook. He goes home exhausted and falls asleep hungry because he’s too tired to fix anything.

A month’s worth of free dinners sounds just about right.

So last week he showed up with a HUGE truck that hammered right into the soil, drilled four feet down into the solid rock, and there you have it. A real post hole, ready for a real fence.

Also via Craig’s List, I have a farmer named David coming on Sunday to till the entire area with his tractor. Same deal -- he’ll get month’s worth of dinners, too.  Sam will come back and put up the fence once the tilling is done, and I will have a real, honest-to-God, garden, not a half-assed patch of dirt with a hose.

I have seeds starting inside for tomatoes, tomatillos and beans. I have lots more to plant once I can put them right into the ground.

I am WAY too excited about this. I’m sending the husband off to get a trailer full of compost tomorrow, and I can’t wait for the compost to get here. Who knew I’d be excited about compost?

I’m really excited about the fantasy garden in my head, though -- the one where I can go out and pick what’s for dinner every night by what’s in season and what’s ripe, full of berry bushes and tomatoes and squash and beans. 

In reality, I don’t really eat squash, and weeding a garden this big is going to be a huge pain in the butt.

No matter. I’ll be satisfied if anything grows that I can eat before Bambi does.

I no longer think deer are cute.

Mark's birthday present

So, I wanted to get Mark a TV for his birthday.
Because I want a TV.
In keeping with our "gotta be different" mindset, we have one TV in the house. We got it six years ago from someone who was upgrading to a flatscreen, and they'd had it four or five years, at least. TVs are aging at about the same rate as computers, so our TV is the equivalent of a computer with a floppy drive.
It's enormous. It weighs more than 400 pounds. It's big enough to kill all of our children at once if it falls over. And it sticks out three feet into our play room.
I know, I know. These are not only first-world problems, but whiny, spoiled, elitist problems. But I still have a vision of a flat-screen, fancy, hung-on-the-wall, big-in-a-good-way TV.
However, I also have a vision of a house with no TV in it at all. One where the kids get up in the morning and don't watch Elmo. Where they build forts and play games.
I also have a vision of Mark's face when he realizes that I spent $500 on a "birthday present" for him that he doesn't want, we don't need and we can't afford.
So. Better judgement prevailed. A once-in-a-lifetime thing; too bad, as I could have used my better judgement to get me out of way worse scenarios than this one, you know?
So, what to get Mark?
He doesn't want anything, and if he ever does, he goes and buys it. He has no hobbies except his wife and kids and fixing the house and Boy Scouts. Yeah, I know. He's perfect. I'll get to the blog post at some point about how much fun it is to live with a perfect husband when you, in fact, are decidedly not, and the kinds of therapy you need to deal with it.
In the meantime, Mr. Perfect needs a gift.
So I stole one, shamelessly, from the Internet.
It's free, clever, creative, easy to make, endlessly adaptive and I might get some time alone in bed with my husband out of it. I mean really, what more can you ask for in a present?
Stealing with no compunction at all from Pinterest, but taking away all the cute and finesse and nice touches, and stealing from dating websites where the couples were still in their first year of marital bliss and didn't have to deal with toddlers and babysitters, I came up with a date night jar.
Yep. For my beloved husband's birthday, I gave him a bunch of craft sticks stuck in a Solo cup.
But not just any craft sticks, mind you. These were colored. And cheerful. And they have sharpie written on them.
Red sticks have ideas for stay-at-home dates. Because we even though we have "Get the hell out and I'll see you 2 a.m." tween, we also have Anxiety Boy and Clinging Toddler Girl. And nothing kills romance faster than a hot date where your phone goes off every four minutes with a  seven-year-old crying on the other end because he's convinced you're never coming back.
So, for stay-at-home dates, we have ideas like ""1,000 piece puzzle and pizza," or "Foreign movie and back rubs," or "Fondue night" or "Sit outside on blanket and drink wine."
And lest you people laugh at the mundanity of it all, a typical Saturday night without said craft stick would be, "Put kids to bed. One of you watches Saturday Night Live and drinks wine. The other plays on the computer. At some point, watch the SNL news together. One of you thinks this is plenty of foreplay and chat to make up for a week of not finishing up a sentence. The other gets annoyed and needs ten full minutes of conversation before you fall into bed. Probably to sleep."
So you know what? "Sports and nachos" or "Fondue and a chick flick" sounds pretty good. So does "Candle light dinner" and "Backrubs, massage oil and candles."
Then I threw in a bunch of green sticks, for nights when we do get a babysitter, so we don't drive around, looking at each other, and end up at Bookpeople reading magazines and drinking coffee again. Not that it's a bad date. It's just not enough to, you know, help make it through another week.
So these include "Go see the bats," Drive-in movie," "Fancy Hotel Bar," "Whatever Groupon says," "Moonlight swim at Barton Springs" and "Mark picks the movie," among others.
And you know the funny thing? The kids had a fit when I was making these. They demanded their own jar.

No one was going to have fondue night, movie night or God forbid, video game night without them!!
We've got slumber parties, cooking dessert, reading books together, a Harry Potter marathon, taking the dog to the lake, a blanket under the stars, going for ice cream, a moonlight swim, playing board games outside and going to the dog park in their cup. They had a blast coming up with things to do, and they can't wait to start choosing. We did yellow for stuff we can do at home, like rent a classic movie they've never seen, and blue for going out -- a pajama ride or  a trip to the arcade.
Are these contrived, silly and not necessary if I were a better planner/organizer/more together mom? You bet. In a perfect world, we'd be doing all of these things anyway.
But this is the real world. And in the real world, we're so excited that we made it to Tuesday night or Wednesday night that we just want to get through dinner and bed time, and we sometimes forget that this will be gone before we know it.
And we should be going to Barton Springs to howl at the full moon with out kids. And we should be playing board games on the deck, and we should be having campouts in out playroom, and taking the dog for a swim in the lake. And if it takes a few craft sticks to remind me that I really like my husband, and hey, making dessert with him might be fun, or if it makes Mark and me wake up and remember that our kids are only little once?

Yep. I'm all about the craft sticks in the Solo cup.

Musings on 15 years

I was never going to get married -- that was a certainty. Men were useful, certainly, and fun, and sometimes they a joy to talk to, and I loved being loved, but marriage was not for me.
I'd seen what it had done to my mother, and I had no interest. Besides -- I had a career, and a life. I was interesting, dammit! I had places to go! I was going to be famous, or at least celebrated in some small circles. Marriage would slow me down.
At first, I was going to be an underwater archeologist. I dove on wrecked ships, took classes off the coast of Maine, was sure I was going to live a life of adventure at sea.
Sadly, I couldn't find anyone to finance that, so I was going to be a regular archeologist, or I'd go into creative writing and pen my best-seller.
 Surprisingly, no patrons arrived to fund that quest, either.
But someone agreed to give me pizza and beer money occasionally, to add to my student loans, if I got a reasonable degree where I could make, like, an actual salary after graduation. So I chose journalism -- there's no money in it, but I could still write, still have adventures, still go off on exotic quests for a story.
My goal was to live in Europe, chase men for fun but never actually catch one, write enough to make money for beer and pizza and drink in the intoxications the world had to offer.
I ended up a copy editor in Galveston, poor beyond my worst imaginings. My rent was $300 a month, and with a car payment and student loans, I ate lots of pea soup, worked at a newspaper at night and waited tables during lunch hour. Not the fantasy I had hoped.
I had dated a guy for years in college, and it pretty much confirmed the worst ideas I'd had about marriage -- if I got married, it would be all about him.
The guy I had dated was a perfect match for me -- a journalist who loved reading, politics and a good debate. He'd had a troubled childhood, too, and we could compare notes on who had the worst parents. He'd talk for hours about his ideas, his plans, his goals, his fears, his thoughts. Then he'd ask what I thought of his ideas, his fears, his plans and his thoughts.
He decided to go off to law school, and we dated long-distance for a while. I think. He might have sort of dumped me before he left, and since subtle isn't my strong point, I might have ignored it, thought we were dating long distance, and then had hysterics that he was sleeping with someone else while he was gone, even though he was dating me when he came home.
Drama, fights, drama, more thoughts, more ideas, more talk about the relationship. Blah, blah, blah.
So I joined a dating service, determined that I'd go out on a few dates to get over the last guy.
The dating service was FUN. A year before the internet hit, you actually had to go to a room to watch videos of guys, and pick out guys you'd like to date from the man library. Hundreds of guys who had paid a ton of money to find a nice girl -- lined up like books on a wall, waiting to be chosen.
First time in, I had 11 guys who wanted to go out. I decided the best way to move on was to say yes to all 11, and by the time I'd worked my way down the list, he'd be a thing of the past.
The first date was a short guy with no manners who said he hated camping and the outdoors and adventure.
The second guy was a creepy musician.
And the third guy was Mark.
Why was Mark at a dating service? He was six feet tall, good-looking, owned his own house, was an engineer and had never been married. He'd never even lived with anyone.
Every bell and whistle went off -- why was this guy not taken? We went on one date, for lunch, and I liked him, but he was a little tame. He didn't know what the internet was and didn't have a computer. I was the web editor for the Galveston newspaper. He didn't know anything about politics. He didn't read the paper, except to follow sports. He'd lived in one house the entire time he grew up, and went to one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school. I'd been to 28 schools.
He was cute enough, though, that I agreed to another date.
And you know what?
He wasn't full of thoughts or ideas or poetry or plans.
Mark just did things. When we went on a date, the evening was planned. He had a restaurant picked out, a place to go after dinner picked out, he picked up the tab and was funny and nice and polite.
Not earth-shattering. Not knock-me-off-my-feet wonderful.
But he got another date.
And he set up a date at the beach, and he brought a bottle of champagne and some fruit and a picnic basket. And there was no drama. And there was no debate, no politics, no competition.
When I finally went to his house, I checked the freezer for body parts.
His carpet had fresh vacuum tracks. He owned his own house, landscaped his own yard, and vacuumed? This was a different breed of creature altogether.
My father had liked poetry, Shakespeare, literature and modern art.
Mark did not read anything except texts on engineering.
He was an Eagle Scout who liked to camp. I didn't know what an Eagle Scout was, though I was mildly impressed when I looked it up.
He had done enough drugs and partying in college that I wasn't worried that he was too rigid, but had stopped early enough that I wasn't worried that he a loser.
He liked dancing, going out to dinner, crawfish boils, going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, loved to travel and was great in bed. Really, what else was I looking for?
Turns out he was at a dating service because it was part of his plan: Get an engineering degree, find a job he likes, work hard, buy a house, and when he turns 30, find a wife. Of course. Why not?
Except I didn't want a husband.
I wanted someone to play with, maybe a companion for a Europe trip, maybe even a friend, but not a husband. Never, ever.
But every time he asked for a date, I said yes.
We started dating in February, and by July, he was a part of my life. I'd started thinking differently about everything. Maybe I didn't want to pick up and go to Europe. Maybe I could just, you know, wait a while.
The thing that fascinated me the most was that he didn't talk about things. He did things. His hot water heater broke, and he didn't call someone to fix it. I watched, horrified, as he took out a saw and cut the pipe away from the wall, and then went and got a new hot water heater and installed.
You can do that?? By yourself? Is that legal??
By October, something had shifted.
I had a talk with my best friend, Christy.
She and I are pragmatic when we are together, and hold nothing back.
"Are you happy with him?" she asked.
Surprisingly, the answer was yes. I didn't know it, but I was falling in love with him more every day.
"Can you find someone better, who can make you happier?"
No. Maybe, if I kept looking, I could find someone who could make me as happy, in a different way, or who would have different strengths and different flaws, but no, I could never be happier.
"Then what are you waiting for? He's not going to wait around forever -- he wants to get married, you've found a great guy -- go for it."
We got engaged on Thanksgiving, and he took me to Paris for an engagement present. This serious, non-nonsense engineer went with me to the Eiffel Tower, and to see can-can dancers, and we ate snails, laughed for hours, and wasted beautiful winter mornings in bed.
And on April 7, 1997, I did what I couldn't believe -- I got married.
We had one year of unbelievable happiness, a year that seemed like it couldn't possibly belong to me, that no one had ever loved anyone this much, or ever been this happy, and surely it was going to end soon in a fiery crash or death or an affair, but I was going to enjoy every second of it.
Eleven months later, one of my best friends, Julia, died at age 29, and I was wrecked. A month after that, Mark's father had a stroke that left him paralyzed and unable to speak. Mark's father had retired early to take care of Mark's mother, who was dying of cancer -- they were both in their early 60s. We took care of  Mark's mom, who died on our second Thanksgiving together.
But we made it through, and I got pregnant with Sawyer, and we were still young and still dreaming of traveling and adventure. We took Sawyer to Italy when he was nine months old, we ate dinner outside on deck, and we still went dancing for fun.
And then, in a three -week span, my nephew, who was 11, came to live with us, Mark's father died, I had a miscarriage and Mark lost his job.
We were lost. No income. An extra child. No new baby. And Mark was lost without his dad.
But you know what? Mark does things.
He doesn't talk about things. He got up, found a job in Virginia Beach, packed us up, started work at a job he hated and persevered. Meanwhile, my mother and sister went to jail. They made our lives miserable, they made my nephew miserable, but we stuck it out.
We lasted three years up there, had another baby, got my nephew on a good path and Mark decided he couldn't work at that company a day longer.
So he flew to Austin, a city he'd always loved, and went to all the engineering companies and said, "I'm here and I"m looking for a job. What have you got?"
And a month later we were in Austin, at a job he loved.
And then we realized, slowly, that our beautiful new baby, this gorgeous, serious child, was not developing the way he should. He was miserable. He was mute. He was, whether we wanted to admit it, autistic. For the first time, our marriage was difficult.
It's hard to talk to each other when there's a screaming child in the room. And there was always, always a screaming child in the room. He didn't sleep. Ever. And when he was awake, he screamed.
Mark and I were on edge, we were grumpy, and we were not feeling the love. We were tired, we were frustrated, and our dreams for our children didn't include a mute, miserable child who would never be an independent adult.
And because I had learned from Mark, and because now I knew, I didn't talk about how to fix it. I just did it. I went out and did research. I found things worth trying. We started a gluten-free diet. And within months, Sander was on the right track.
Since then, we've had another miscarriage, another baby, and our nephew has grown up and joined the Navy. He's served five years, and he's coming home in July.
But Mark and I are still here. We're still married.
And we're nowhere near the same people we were fifteen years ago.
Our dreams are different, and in some ways, smaller.
I don't want big adventures, or to be famous, or to go off around the world on my own. I want my kids to be healthy. I want to do a good job educating them. I want to see what it's like to raise my daughter, now that I've raised three boys.
Mark no longer writes bad poetry for me, and he doesn't bring home roses every Friday night. Instead, the laundry is done, and so are the dishes.
Anything broken is fixed. Anything out of place is put right. I can't imagine picking out his clothes for him, packing his suitcase for a trip or making doctor's appointments for him. I don't even know where he keeps his boxers or his socks.
He arranges his business trips around Boy Scout meetings, gets up with Scout in the morning, brings me coffee in bed on weekends and takes my car to get its oil changed. I've never had to register a car, pay a traffic ticket or fight with an insurance company. That's how Mark shows that he loves me, and it's better than any poem I could imagine.
Mark's turning 50 next year, and we're hatching plans for a trip somewhere fun. Our boys are healthy and happy and, frankly, amazing. It's the best thing ever to watch them grow up.
And our toddler, Scout, makes me smile to think of her, and she loves her Daddy with a fierceness and a passion that makes my heart ache.
When we got married, my uncle took me aside and said, "If you and Mark end up getting divorced, it will be YOUR FAULT. You found a great guy, and he's good to you, and he loves you and he'll never cheat on you and he's about as good as they come. Don't fuck this up."
And, funnily enough, I agreed with him. The best thing about being married to Mark is that we both think we're the lucky one. I can't believe I met someone who can put up with me and who still likes me. He can't believe he met a girl who, well, I think he's still amazed he met a girl, period. I'll take it.
I think, in the end, my friend Christy was right. After 15 years, I still can say that I couldn't be any happier.
What else could you ask for?