(Of note: This was written in 2019)
It’s been 37 days since Angel moved in with Dad and I.
I’ve fallen into the open toilet bowl on at least 3 occasions and there are whiskers on my bathroom sink.
I mean, OUR bathroom sink.
One day, I stuck my head in the shower to turn on the taps and got soaked because he forgot to push down the button that releases the water from the shower head.
And the fitted sheet keeps popping off the corners of my mattress every night.
I mean, OUR mattress.
After 38 years, it’s hard getting used the fact that everything that was mine is now “Ours”.
But I like it.
For the first time since mom passed, I find myself shopping and cooking and cleaning for three people once again. It’s becoming habit now. Saturdays I plan meals, search the weekly ads for “BOGOs” and coupons and savings, make a grocery list in excel, careful to stick to my set budget, and then spend an hour going up and down every aisle of the grocery store.
Except for the baby aisle. Not yet.
Weekends are spent doing laundry and dishes and picking up dirty socks off the bedroom floor. Today, I will vacuum up the dirt and sand that fell off of his work books earlier this week.
The other night, he asked me to turn down my sleepy-time meditation music and then proceeded to carry on a loud conversation with his online friends while they played Red Dead Redemption into the wee hours of the morning.
But I’m absolutely loving every minute because of the way he smiles and says “Hello my Love” every day I get home from work.
Because instead of falling asleep crying from loneliness while I hug my old, worn teddy bear, I now fall asleep in his strong arms surrounded by warmth and love with his kisses on my forehead and his fingers gently running through my hair.
Because every morning when we wake up, he rolls over and lazily smiles at me, as if finding me in his bed just made his entire day.
Because he misses me when I go to work, and wants me to text to let him know that I got there safely, and wants me to text him when I’m on my way home so that he can excitedly wait for me to arrive.
Because I am now bombarded with hugs while I’m cooking and get tons of kisses while I do the dishes, and he even helps by drying them and putting them away.
Because I have a partner who happily goes down every shopping aisle with me and helps me unload the groceries in the rain. Someone who - without being obligated to and without being asked - helps to take care of my father. From Day One, he’s made him breakfast and lunch and gotten him things to drink throughout the days that I’m at work. A partner who takes out the trash and has made it his job to put the trash bins out on the right days and bring them back in once they’re emptied. A partner who texts me throughout the day to let me know he washed the dishes for me, or he trimmed the bushes or raked the leaves, and even sends me pictures to prove it.
Because he already loves our cats as if he’s known them for years, and because I can see in the way he treats them and holds them and loves on them the father that he will one day be.
I know it’s early in our life together, and there will be a day that I complain about falling into the dirty toilet bowl, or the whiskers on the sink. There will be a day I’ll get pissed about getting my clothes soaked because he didn’t turn the shower head off and I’ll grumble as I pick the dirty socks up from the bedroom floor. The newness and excitement of living with a man for the first time will wear off.
But I will never tire of sharing my life, my home and my bed with someone who is so very, very easy to love, and so very eager and excited to love me in return and I hope with all of my heart to remember to be grateful for every moment we share together.
I’m not the praying type, but I find myself praying anyway that I always cherish falling asleep in his arms and that I get to happily wake up to that brilliant smile and those warm eyes of his every morning for the rest of my life.
And I can’t wait to see how our life together changes. I know it won’t always be easy and that there will be many blessings that may not feel like blessings at the time, but I spent last night imagining how things will be different in the coming years together. Imagining the new house we will one day have and the home we will make of it and the gatherings we will have. Imagining the trips we will take and how the corner of his eyes will one day wrinkle from all the ways I’ve made him smile. Imagining the way his dark hair will begin to gray like mine already has, or the laugh lines that will one day form around his mouth from all the times we’ve laughed till our bellies ached.
Imagining how we will get comfortable at night once my belly is swollen with a child, and how he will be able to handle not being able to hold me at night because our toddler needs to sleep between mommy and daddy after a nightmare. Imagining the way he will look when he holds our child for the first time, or the way he will fall asleep in his recliner with them asleep in his arms.
It’s been 37 days since I started living with a boy, and I’m so very, very in love with him that I can’t wait for all the days ahead.
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