Day Four (Finally)

This is Day Four of of the Love Your Spouse Seven-Day Challenge, assuming that we are on some unknown planet where days are as long as six or seven of our 24-hour Earth days. Seriously, have you ever known someone so completely lax about the rules of a game? (Well, except for the Chinese, whose gymnasts are NO POSSIBLE WAY 16 YEARS OLD. Ahem. Sorry.)

This photo literally fell out of an album at me a few days ago, and how could I not post it? One of the things I love most about my spouse is his total commitment to being a dad, and here is photographic proof. This would have been Mother's Day of 1992, which Boy#4 helpfully allowed me to carbon date by being three months old in it.

I love this picture. Those little hands! The cheeks! The ties! That denim dress I wore all. the. time! Husband's hair!  Four children five years old and younger.

I was reminded of those little Boys yesterday when I attended the 40th birthday party of the woman who, as a teenager, was their babysitter. Dear L. was having a hard time believing she had reached that age.

"Oh, the 40s are fabulous!" I told her. "You're starting to see your life take shape--this is what you've been waiting to happen."

And then I had to stop talking, because anything after that would just be made up.

The truth? My recollection of my 40s is sketchy at best. Those were the years when I was mostly trying to keep the kids out of the street and vaccinated, and I wasn't always successful with either of those things. Boy#3 had a reaction to the pertussis vaccine and wasn't able to get that shot until last year, at age 25. He also was the two-year-old who managed to unlock the front door while I was upstairs putting a load of laundry in the washer. He was delivered back to me, still barefoot and pajama-clad, by an extremely irate stranger. I was appropriately scarred by the experience, and could describe the scene in vivid detail even today.

In fact, the day-to-day from those years has pretty much disappeared. I remember the high spots and milestones--the first day of kindergarten for Boy#1, when I cried and the world continued to turn; Halloween costumes; sitting on the living room floor putting names on school supplies; emergency trips to the hospital for breathing treatments. I don't remember what we ate for breakfast, or anyone's favorite color, or how in the world I existed on so little sleep.

It was a constant balance between feeling inadequate and realizing that hey! I was doing it so I must be adequate!

I look at those little boys in this picture, and I look at the fine men they've grown to be, and I don't quite know how we got from that Point A to that Point B. All I know is that something visceral makes me smile when I think of that unremembered decade of my 40s.

And even while I know I couldn't do it again, I know it must have been fabulous.