Echoes.

I feel like I’m beginning the tiny lessons that begin in marriage.
Where you still don’t have a clue but know you don’t have a clue and are starting to get whispers of what or where a clue might be.
Patience being the first huge hint of the need to come.
He and I are so different, you see. We compliment each other in a lot of ways, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t still drive each other nuts.

Sometimes, in the middle of the nuts, it seems so odd that we love each other so much.
Our nuts aren’t quite like other folks’s nuts. We don’t yell or name call or fight really. We don’t disagree if there are people within hearing distance, saving those moments for Nick and Lish moments.
But we do still feel nuts on the inside. Not quite right, not quite settled.

A lot of that coming from trying to feel ‘at home’ when you aren’t ‘at home.’
Until we’re in the same house, there is a lot that we can’t do together, including feeling like we’re at a physical address that we belong in.
I can’t fix that now, so I simply work with him on the events that are dredged up because of those feelings.

And during our nuts moments, I listen patiently or he listens patiently to whatever illogical statement the other is making.
And I think that’s definitely a sign of the future to come. A lot of listening – a lot of not agreeing all the time, but a lot of respecting differences.
It’s hard, so far. Not that it hasn’t always been, but there is a certain freedom when you’re not married. An escape clause that I’m just now realizing no longer exists.
We are. Not he and I. WE. And that’s a whole new ballgame that blows my mind up with the hugeness, but rightness of it.

Driving along after lunch yesterday Nick mentions college savings for Abbey. He and I don’t think the same way about so many things, but for him, this is one of the ways he shows love. To make sure that she never has to be panicked about her future or her ability to make her way in the world. He wants to answer those worrying questions for her before she asks them. Sure, he wants her to work hard and not need our money, but the love in him makes him plan for the hard times for her.
I melt.
We might disagree on how we get there – I always give in because I’m mainly disagreeing on principle – he’s amazing with money and planning – but we do have the same goals.
And that matters.
And Abbey being okay is one of them.

Last night watching my husband (!!) and daughter on the couch spending time together was like a balm to my soul – the years of hearing her cry for her father, wondering why he didn’t love her enough to spend time with her – it makes me happy that this time I chose well. My 29 year old self found a good man, and while he won’t be Abbey’s father, and while I can’t fix that situation, I can show her, through example, the kind of man and kind of relationship I hope she finds in her life.

So I guess the point is that underneath the nuts that sometimes float to the surface is this knowledge that I am sublimely lucky, even in my nervousness.
And that the patience I’ll need will be hard to find at times, but my husband and my relationship with him and my family are So Completely Worth It.

Lol, now who do I entrust with that knowledge for the days when he leaves wet towels on the floor and all I want to do is bury him in slime up to his neck for a couple of hours?