My urge to write is returning. It is so strange to read through the Past-Dawn and wonder how she was so funny. SO brilliant. How did she do those things and write those words?
Some is youth; She was young and running after a child , and in school, and working full time. I can feel those days, far away, brushing up against my skin. The urge to write, to get it out of my jumbly head, to find people who thought I was smart and funny on this crazy newfangled thing called the internet was unstoppable. No one can know what those days were like when so many of us threw these small digital lines out into the universe not knowing what we may find.
Once I became a professor my jumbly thoughts slowed down. I had students to entertain and words to say all day, every day. My desire to write anything faded. I would leave work a little after 6 p.m. and just crave silence. Luckily I live in a relatively quiet family and a fair amount of space is given. Like a houseful of cats, we can be in the same room, but not really doing the same thing.
Once Emily began college in 2016, our house got blessedly Quite. Like Quite x2. Terrance and I walked around for the first month just absorbing the silence. The lack of mess. The decrease in our electric bill. The cessation of the demand for meals cooked. Did I mention the absolute lack of laundry? Maybe two loads a week! It was astounding. We regarded each other with no child in the middle of us, and found that we liked each other.
Parenting - for us - was a marathon of grit and tenacity. Emily was so MUCH, and needed so MUCH, that the tether between Terrance and I became the finest of spider webs. Nearly invisible. I spent much of the 2000's and part of the 2010's waiting for our inevitable divorce.
It was terrible. 0/10, do not recommend.
And then she went to college. Don't get me wrong. She was still A LOT. Phone calls, texts - millions of texts - all day every day. As the parent who does 99.99% of the emotional labor I was still a living battery in service to my child. Her awkward, anxious, weird self did not have the sort of free wheeling, social experiences that her mother, or her father, had in college. As she was 1200 mile away, it prevented her from running home and crawling back into my uterus. (Yes, I planned for her to be away, away from home for college. She was too much of an only child and needed distance to keep her in school)
For all of that emotional labor in service to her, through high school, through undergrad, through grad school, and then "real world" jobs and apartments and breakups and new relationships, my relationship with her father has continued to grow stronger.
Occasionally we fight about her. However, those fights feature far more hindsight and distance. We fight about her personality, common sense, and understanding of the real world. We juxtapose what our lives were like at her age and how she just assumes how things work at that same age. I remind him that we protected her from all of those realities and so it is ridiculous for him to get worked up. I do it gently because I also get worked up (She had no idea what a car loan was, people. NO IDEA. Because her parents have given her two cars : / )
I will touch him on the shoulder or hold his hand and say "I am so glad we stayed together. I am so glad we made it through parenting her." He will murmur and kiss my hand.
I can't speak to the marriages of others. As our 30th wedding anniversary looms in October, I have learned that I don't know shit about other peoples marriages. I do know that our decision to have a child, and the reality of who that child is, was nearly the cutting of the cord between he and I. We both love her, fiercely, but Jesus Christ.
(When someone broke up with her I immediately asked where that person lived so I could go cut her tires. My sister asked the same thing. Emily said "Why did you both ask the same question". My response "You don't come from a line of sane rational women. We are going to fuck shit up.")
My love for Terrance has changed, as it should. It has grown less urgent, quieter. What I previously interpreted as controlling was his anxiety. I am not an easy partner to live with - with my continuing stack of health issues, and mental health diagnoses...oh, and menopause. I've really pushed the "in sickness and health" part of the marriage vows to the limit.
However, we've found our way.
