Santa and I had a date that we were running late for. 

Emma had screamed the entire ride home and was now refusing to eat and, with equal fervor, refusing to let me clean her up. Her daycare clothes needed to be changed and her pigtails had been pulled out throughout the day, leaving a tangled and creased nest scattered about her head. 

Fred had asked for dinner and taken off with the dog as the microwave announced its meal. From downstairs, I heard enough to know he had stepped in the dog’s business outside and trailed it across the floor.

With microwave beeping, disgust proclaiming, and tiny hands clutching the side of a high chair, I looked desperately at the clock and then at my red-faced toddler. The tears spilling over those rosy cheeks mocked my building anxiety. 

“This will make for wonderful photographs.” I sneered to myself. 

Basement mess now clean, Fred joined me upstairs, commenting that Emma did not appear to be having a good day. It wasn’t my favorite observation though I knew he was right. Will I push us to misery trying to capture perfection? Would this be happening if I hadn’t waited until the very last session with Santa? Could this perfect picture I imagine replace my guilt over skipping family portraits and Christmas cards this year?

I can’t say what prompted Fred to push forward with my overreaching plan but he quickly cleaned off Emma and changed her into the outfit I had carefully laid out while I hid in the kitchen, eating my feelings. Perhaps he could feel the wave of angst threatening against my internal breakwalls. 

I drove while Fred talked on the phone and just a moment before he would’ve told me to turn, I realized that the sippy cup he had given her was not meant to be leak proof.

“Are you kidding me?!” I snarled.

As he reached back to grab the cup, he pointed to our turn. 

One violent parking lot turnaround and a few extra minutes later, we pulled up to the Gardens. 

The line for Santa was out the door. 

Panic and anger found their hold before resolution as we drove from the first parking area to the second to the third. 

“Do you want to just walk around?” I asked in what may have been my first rational thought of the evening. 

“Yeah!” Fred replied.  

After one more flare of anxiousness was settled, we wheeled toward the overcrowded entryway where the lungs of an angry newborn warned of expectations ruined. 

I looked, half longingly and half incredulously at the bearded man in the sleigh as we passed him but he paid me no mind. He did not care that I had missed our date.

   

   Emma did not care either, nor Fred. And in the end, I have decided that I don’t care as well. 

This year, I traded in the card-worthy photo for some grainy shots from an iPhone on the move, the uninhibited joy of a toddler surrounded by lights, and a walk in the crisp, cool air with my husband.

Lord, thank you for refocusing me in this moment. Thank you for calling me to appreciate family during the very season in which you came to us in human form, an infant King. And thank you for calling me daughter and heir. Amen. 

Tonight I miss my husband so much that I actually hurt.

That’s crazy.

We’ve been ships passing in the night for over a month now. Flying in for a restless night, partner’s bags packed for the morning. Heading off to tackle the next show, the next training, the next, the next, the next. Planning, scheduling, and traveling. Keeping up through shared itineraries and orchestrated hand-offs.

All day today it’s been pulling at my seams, threatening to unravel me. One unexpected struggle. One missed beat and suddenly I’ll be mere thread and buttons on the floor, waiting to be swept up by the next calendar event.

It’s nice, in a way, to realize that if you boil down the rushed schedules and unfinished chores, the “your turns” and sleepless nights, the different love languages and “can’t you share my hobbies?” over night after night of work trips, you are left with the sticky sweet, simplified truth:

I love that man. I crave time with him. His hand over mine. His arm over my shoulder, pulling me in. I love the crinkle of his eyes when he’s teasing me about something. And I miss him.

We’re in the middle of August and should be experiencing the heat of the summer. And yet, I awoke this morning enveloped in a cool breeze. Caressed in the perfect balance of blanket and cold.

As if the key which activates an old machine, the cool air comes through and begins to turn the cogs of my best self. I felt rested this morning. Never do I ever feel rested but with a cold nose and cracked window, I felt rested. And perhaps it doesn’t only affect me.

Emma greeted me this morning with a warm arm draped around my neck. Cheek to cheek she stayed for a perfect moment in time, smiling at her mother. Can she feel the turning cogs too?

“In the meantime Alice got up and washed her face and ate porridge for breakfast. She went to school and came home and did her homework.

And pretty soon she was grown up.” – Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

A few months ago, I asked about our marriages. How are they? How are they holding up under the early months of parenthood?

I’m making a list of all the things to say to new parents when I meet their new bundles, you know. I’ve said it before but in my list you won’t find a single “Isn’t it the best?” or “Cherish these moments.” because it wasn’t and I didn’t. Instead, you will find “It gets better.” and “It’s okay if you don’t love it right now.” and “How’s your marriage?” because those are the things that I needed to hear. The things that shed some light under the crack of the closet door I tried to lock my skeletons in over this past year.

Our marriage.

This was a hard year on our marriage. It was hard on us as individuals and I suppose that’s what made it hard on our marriage. No taking turns. We were both depleted… And people do different things when they’re depleted.

I, for instance, need every little thing entered into my calendar. No surprises. Not an impromptu grocery trip. Not a spur-of-the-moment house project. Nothing that I can’t see coming well in advance. Spontaneity derails me.

Fred, on the other hand, needs everything in its physical place. Spotless. Not an article of clothing misplaced. Not a sock unmatched. Not a floor unswept. It unnerves him to have clutter, laundry, or dishes out.

We’re different. Our differences are what help us fall in love but they’re also what drive us apart. During periods of this past year, our differences made our marriage cantankerous. We’ve been working on it, of course (as clashing clans, brothers on opposite sides of battle lines), but it hasn’t been easy. Each unable or unwilling to give in first.

My version of the story is that Fred is highly OCD and has unrealistc standards for new parents with a house and a shedding dog. I don’t believe my house is unkept (in fact, a girlfriend of mine just voted it in the top tier of homes in our friend rotation), but our routine – or lack thereof – was driving my husband insane. Bitterly insane.

I couldn’t keep up. With two of us working full time and dinner and trying to read as many books to Emma as we can before she passes out and bath time, we ran out of options. We had tried to keep during the week when Emma went to bed but were exhausted. We tried to scrub and organize everything during the weekend but we desperately wanted to engage with Emma, to encourage her steps and exploration and babbles.

So a few weeks ago, Fred hired a cleaning service to come in every so often and press the reset button. It feels like a shameful thing to spend money on to me. To ask someone to come into my home with a duster and clean the cobwebs off the skeleton in my closet – to expose my inability to keep up.

After the first cleaning, I asked Fred if it gave him the peace he needed and he said it did. If logic trumped feeling, it would be the end of this story. Our version of marriage counseling. If we were in the context of the workplace, I would praise us both for coming up with a great solution to an impasse. But logic doesn’t always trump feeling and although I know it was the right thing, it doesn’t feel very satisfying to me.

Scheduling the first visit was a cease fire, in a way. Since then, the pressure of not keeping up has eased. It’s out in the open – good, bad, or indifferent. Fred has asked me to share my calendar with him. We even had a dinner date, the three of us, where we laughed and shared across the table in a way that felt comfortable and familiar.

I’m starting to wonder if God isn’t using this time to encourage me to seek help more often. To allow others to use their gifts to lift me up. Here I am trying to forge ahead and encourage others and God is asking me to be vulnerable and let someone else help me clean the skeleton in my closet.

If so, it’s been a hard lesson to learn… But no doubt a valuable one.