we like to watch you laughing.

after we got married we’d constantly be asked how married life was going. the question would be asked so enthusiastically that i almost felt bad with my response. married life didn’t seem that different from dating life. except we got to be together all day and all night.

as the years added up, and it continued to just be the two of us, we’d frequently have to answer a new type of question. what do you guys do with all your free time? usually followed up with, i bet you sleep in every weekend!

in the absence of children our lives were different, our time was our own, but there was an emptiness and it was heavy.

when i look back on 2013 i refer to it as “the year i was sick”. so many things passed me by as i tried to survive the heavy fog of constant illness. one evening, when i was feeling a little better, christian surprised me with a night drive to sonic. {despite numerous commercials the nearest sonic is 30 miles away}.

we drove with the windows down, winding our way through black diamond, keeping an eye on the speed. the sun was still bright and it smelled like grass through enumclaw. as we started to pull in to buckley i began feeling pretty badly. should we stop? christian asked. no, it’s okay, i’ll be fine. i said. and then with urgency, pull over now!

before he could put the car in park i had undone my seat belt and was kneeling on the concrete over the gutter along main street. cars passing by and the windows of vacant homes looking on. up the road was a dingy little motel, and there was a woman walking toward us.

is she okay? the woman had a gravelly voice.

she’s expecting. christian called back.

the woman went inside and a minute later came back with a water bottle and some napkins. is this your first? that harsh voice again. we nodded and thanked her for her kindness. she smiled, and then said, you look like you’ll be amazing parents.

back in the car we pressed on to sonic which proved to be a mistake. i got to know the sonic bathroom better than i would have liked.

almost exactly a year later we made that same drive. this time with a little whopper in the back. he was in his jammies, watching everything zoom by through the open window. when we arrived he was very excited to be free of his car seat.

sitting in the front with us he shared our tater tots and ate bites of our hamburger buns. his arms made ninja-like swipes for our milkshakes. and we laughed. and we were happy. and i felt a kind of contentedness that i hadn’t before. this is what everyone else had been doing with their free time. this is what it was like to take a family outing. sleeping in on the weekend is really overrated. i would trade all my sleeping-ins for that one night with my little whopper – hearing him squeal at all the cars pulling in next to us and watching him try to grab my sandwich.
…………………………
kids, mgmt