Big Daddy

Baby Bee calls him Papa.  By her own choice.  She can say Daddy, but she calls him Papa.  He loves it.

We always thought we’d have a son, but really?  I think he’s wonderfully suited to be a Daddy of only girls.  Not that he wouldn’t have been a great Daddy to boys, but there’s something magical about the Daddy he is to little girls.

He is exactly what every little girl needs her Daddy to be.  He’s sweet, playful and strong enough to carry a heavy five year old up the stairs to tuck into bed.  He’s confident enough to love them.  Outloud.  With hand holding and skipping and hugs and kisses.  He’s confident enough to admit that he’s been changed by them.

He’s selfless enough to put them first, which just isn’t a given in this great big world.

And, lucky for me, he loves their mother.  Which, also, isn’t a given.

He supports me. He backs me up.  He toils along with me.  He gets up at 3 a.m. to comfort Baby Bee back into the sleep that is so hard for her to hold in her teeny little hands.  He sings the “Stinky Girl” song.  He plays possum baby.  He submits to numerous indignities to make them happy.

He does this.

He was skipping.  He was making my dream come true in this very second. Of course, he’s done that every day for the past 13 years.

He is the best partner I could have ever picked to walk into this crazy job with these three amazing kids and the only person who could have done it the exact way I’d want it done.  And, he does it all without my saying a word.

When I wrote about our marriage, I wrote about how we chose each other.  How we chose our marriage, but that’s not the only thing Big Daddy chooses.  He chooses to be this guy.  Every day.

Which is everything.

We love you, Big Daddy.  More.

Dear Daughters,

A dozen times or more I’ve sat down at my keyboard and decided to write a small primer on what makes a happy marriage.  It is my hope that each one of you will find your own prince or princess charming to complete your life.  It’s my hope that you’ll walk down the aisle (any aisle, really) toward your beloved as a bride full of hope and happiness for your own golden future.  Just as I did as a bride almost 13 years ago.

How perfect, I thought, to write a little how-to to my girls while I sat “in the trenches”. Big Daddy and I are navigating through what are, statistically, the hardest parts of marriage.  We’re raising young children, but I’m pretty sure Big Daddy still hangs the moon and I want so much to be able to tell my girls how to have just this.  Because this is so worth it.

But now matter how hard I’ve tried to encapsulate our marriage into a few cute talking points, I’ve found I can’t do it.  The words fail.  I find that I don’t have any advice to give.  A few weeks ago, I admitted to Big Daddy that maybe I’m not good at marriage.  I’m just good at marriage to him.  Big Daddy isn’t given to hysterics or histrionics. He doesn’t need to need to prattle on endlessly, in detail, about small things.  Make no mistake, he’s not a man of few words, but his words are measured and logical and rational.

My foil.  My perfect, perfect foil.

During this conversation, Big Daddy suggested that, perhaps, our marriage is so successful because it is not only exactly what we wanted by something we choose every day.

And so, my girls, in a few short sentences, Big Daddy summed up everything I’d been trying to say forever.

A happy marriage is about choice.  Choosing the right partner?  Yes, of course. But it’s so much more than that.  A happy marriage is about choosing that partner with every sunrise and sunset.  With your thoughts and your words and your actions.

It’s about wanting that kiss every morning.  Not just accepting it.  Or tolerating it.  Wanting it.  Choosing it. Not feeling complete until you’ve had it.  It’s about needing that time with your head on their chest at night.  Not accepting it.  Or tolerating it. Wanting it. Choosing it. Missing it when they’re away for the night on business or out late with friends.

It’s about forgiving.  Not to a fault, but human mistakes.  It’s about choosing to not hold a grudge and choosing to be careful with someone who has entrusted their heart into your hands for good keeping. It’s about choosing to be vulnerable, and girls, I know this can be so hard depending on the path you walked to find your person.  Choose not to hide your softness or your weakness.  Choose to let them love you for yours and you love them for theirs.  Choose to believe them when they say you’re pretty.  Choose to believe them when they say love you.  Choose to believe them when they treat you like you hang them moon.  Choose to treat them the same way.

Choose them in the quiet moments. Choose them in the big ones and the loud ones and the crazy ones and the sad ones.  Get up every morning and say to the sun and to the world and to yourself that you’re choosing them today.  It’s simple advice, really.  Just keep choosing each other.  When it’s easy and most importantly, when it isn’t.  It’s the best advice I can give, girls.  Even if it did come from your Dad.

Love,

Mom

So, I might not be cut out for home renovations.  The two days the floor installers were here totally messed up my flow.  I didn’t even post a menu plan this week!

However, I am in LOVE with how pretty the house looks.  As soon as we install the baseboards, I’ll be sharing pictures.  Can’t wait.

Usually, October is a sad month for me.  I know that seems strange, considering my love for Fall and how much I’m into Christmas, but it was in October all those years ago that Cancer knocked on our door and decided it was my Mom’s turn to fight.

And she’d lose the battle.

But usually, October would ring in with me feeling unsettled.  That’s actually a nice way to describe the fact that my anxiety would skyrocket and my depression would flare up.  Usually, by mid-October, I’d be back to taking my meds and trying to figure WTH happened and then I’d put it all together.  October.  Tumor. Surgery. Beginning.

For some reason, this year, October and the twin spectors of Cancer and Anxiety aren’t plauging me.  I have no explanation other than the fact that I told the anxiety to eff off and I told Cancer that it was going to have to pay me rent if it wanted to spend more time living in my head.

In any case, the heaviness has been absent from this month and it gave me the opportunity, the first in years, to remember that October didn’t used to be sucha  dark, dreary sad month for me.

In October 1998, Big Daddy flew from Chicago to Detroit to have lunch with me.  Although we’d been talking on the Internet for months (since May) it was our first face to face meeting and I was, well, anxious(surprise!).

A week later, Big Daddy and I met halfway, in Kalamazoo.  On Sweetest Day weekend.  He took me out for dinner (Olive Garden.  He thought he was slumming it).  I remember watching Big Daddy in my rear view mirror as I drove away on Sunday.  I knew that I’d move heaven and earth to be with him.

We were married nine months later.

We celebrated our 12 year Anniversary this past July.

When I wake up in the morning, I can’t wait to roll over and find him there.  All warm and drowsy from sleep.  When I go to bed at night, I can’t  waitto curl up next to him with my head on his shoulder and my arm flung across his chest.  My dearest hope is that I always feel that way.  Every morning and every night.

When i was a little girl I wanted a fairy tale.  I wanted Prince Charming on a white horse.  I wanted happily ever after.  I wanted something perfect and beautiful, like the fairy tales I’d had read to me (and read myself  and hoped against hope that even some small shred of them would be true).

And then, there was you.  You are more than I ever believed was possible.  You are better than anything I could have ever imagined. You are better than any Prince Charming and even better?  You’re mine.

I couldn’t have chosen a better person or a better partner to share my life.

I couldn’t have found someone who knows me so well.  And it isn’t just the time.  It isn’t the dozen years we’ve spent together, happily.  Compatibly.  You understand me on a cellular level and in a way that no one else has.  You seen things in me that I cannot see nor believe in myself.

You are what I wish for when I think about the future of our girls.  That they find someone just like you.  Someone who isn’t afraid to love them.  Someone who isn’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and pitch in.  Someone who is proud of the person they are and believes them capable of every thing.  Just like you do for me.

No fairy tale is this good.  No happily ever after this happy.  Thankful is too small of  a word.  So is grateful.  I can say it no better than to say I Love You.  Because it’s true and I do.

Happy Anniversary, sweet heart.

There’s more to this story.  Check out part 1, part 2 and part 3

Big Daddy and I sat next to each other at lunch. My hand inside his big, warm one.  He smelled wonderful.  Like leather and my favorite cologne and something else that is just how Big Daddy smells (does that sound werid?  I think Big Daddy and the kids all have a unique smell.  It’s not body odor or anything.)  We conversed with our friends.  We smiled a lot.  I tried to eat.

My heart felt like it was trying to escape my chest.  Every time Big Daddy squeezed my hand under the table, I felt my insecurities flitting farther and farther away.    All of the millions of tiny concerns that had plagued me for so long and that had kept Big Daddy and me apart flew away like fluff off a dandelion.  All of them just ceased to exist.

After lunch, we decided to drive about a half an hour up the river.  It was a beautiful fall day and there’s a lovely boardwalk.  Big Daddy and I walked off from our friends where we were…uh…inseparable.  ;) (Which basically means we made out until the last possible minute when we had to jump into the cars and drop me off at work.).  Big Daddy and I didn’t talk a lot.  We had done the talking.  We’d talked for hours and hours for days and weeks and months.  We didn’t need to talk.

We still don’t.  The best thing about Big Daddy is that I can be silent with him.  That we can sit for hours and never have to say a thing.  That’s the idea that launched this series.  The day Big Daddy and I were laying on the couch together, in complete and yet companionable silence and how I think our entire story brings us to this place.  How we can talk about everything and nothing with the exact same success.

After Big Daddy dropped me off at work, we had a plan made.  The next weekend I was getting into a car and I was driving half way to Big Daddy.  We were meeting in the college town where one of my best friends was going to University.  We were spending the weekend together.

I couldn’t wait!

I expect my Mom wanted to vomit.

But I was 22 and what could anyone do?  And honestly, had they pushed me or tried to prevent me (I was still living at home.  They were paying for school), I was prepared to do something rash, which is really out of character.  And so, on the Thursday afternoon before Sweetest Day in 1998 I got into my car and drove the 3ish hours to Kalamazoo.  That night I got dolled up.  I went out to the bar.  I danced.  I drank.  I refused slow dances.

Big Daddy was coming.  After work on Friday and I wanted no complication.  I was loyal.  I was head over heels in love.

Want to read where our story began?  Check out part 1 and part 2.

After my epiphany, I knew that it was time for Big Daddy and I to meet.

I was cagey at first.  I swung wildly between wanting to see Big Daddy RIGHT now and wanting to go back into hiding over fear of a possible rejection.  Let’s meet now, let’s not.  He’ll love me, he’ll hate me.  I’m sure I drove people crazy, but I couldn’t help it. I’ve always been anxious and it seemed like everything was hinging on this meeting.  My whole future.  Everything.

We decided on a Saturday in October.  Frankly, I have no idea why we picked it.  I had to work a split shift that day and only had a few hours to give to Big Daddy that day.  Of course, looking back it was safe.  Super smart.  We couldn’t meet much earlier than noon, because I was working.  We couldn’t stay together after 3:30 or so because I had to be back to work.  If it was an unmitigated disaster, it would be brief.  If it wasn’t….

…Well, I wasn’t expecting much success.  Really.

Big Daddy flew in that Saturday morning and a mutual chat room friend (with whom we’ve lost touch, but I wish we hadn’t) picked Big Daddy up from the airport and drove him the near hour from the south side of Detroit to where I lived.  A little town tucked into a small lake between two of the great ones.  Of course, I had to have a posse.  No one trusted me with two guys from a chat room.

So, me and four of my closest friends showed up at a local restaurant in the early afternoon.  We were there early.  We were seated.

I didn’t have a cell phone.  It was back in the day when they were bricks and expensive and I was a college student and college students are famously broke.  We waited at the restaurant.  I watched the parking lot.  I had no idea when Big Daddy would arrive or if he would.  If his feet would get cold. If he would change his mind.  I sat and I waited.

I hadn’t seen much of Big Daddy.  Just a few pictures. A vague idea.  His height.  The color of his hair and eyes.  What he would look like was only a guess, but somehow I knew what he would feel like.  Or what I hoped he would feel like.

After what felt like a million years, but was really only minutes, I saw him.  Or who I assumed to be him.  Tall.  Dark hair. Black leather jacket.  Accompanied by another man who looked like  I  assumed our mutual friend to look.

I felt, for a minute, like Melanie Wilkes in the Gone with the Wind.  When Ashley comes home from war?  She’s on the porch at Tara and she sees another soldier coming up the road to Tara.  She sees him and turns to tell Mammy they’re going to need more food.  She turns back again, and there’s suddenly something about this soldier.  The way he walks or the exact color of her hair.  Her hand flies up to her throat for a second, and her face splits into a smile and she and Ashely flies into each others arms.

(Is this the time to say I never liked Melanie?  I’m team Scarlet.  Except for when it comes to Ashley.  I’m also Team Rhett).

Something about the way he walked.  Something about him.  It was him.  I knew with certainty.  I got up out of myself. I pondered running.  I really did.  Like a movie.  I argued with myself as I walked through the restaurant and out the door if it would be lame to run? Needy? Weird?

I didn’t run.  I regret that.

But I hurried.  And he hurried. And then I was in his arms.  I kissed him twice on the cheek and he kissed me once on the lips.

And I don’t want to sound sappy, but I was home.

Want some background?  Our story starts here.

Let me start off by saying that Big Daddy was NOT a part of the prison penpal program.  Those who know us know our story and know why I loved Big Daddy with all my heart, despite us never having met.  All of those conversations and interactions were long distance.  All I had was the warmth of his voice and his words and a few pictures (one that included a full moon).

Big Daddy and I met on the Internet.

In a hockey chat room.

You know, back when we first met and married, it seemed strange to say that.  People would appear mildly shocked.  But now, Internet matchmaking features prominently on mainstream t.v. and suddenly the whole premise of an Internet romance isn’t so strange anymore.

As the summer passed, Big Daddy was getting more pushy about us meeting.  He was coming to Michigan for a meet up with some other folks from the chat room, couldn’t we meet up then?

I declined.

I was afraid.

You see, I thought Big Daddy was so wonderful and I felt so ordinary.  He was funny and smart.  He was working at a great company (I mean, it was a crappy job but whatever.  I was working part time at a grocery store) and I was still in college, really foundering as I tried to figure out something that I wanted to do that would pay the bills.

All of my insecurities fell down on top of me when Big Daddy would start asking to meet. I felt fat.  I felt ugly.  I felt immature.  I felt stupid.  I felt very unworthy of the things that Big Daddy was.  And all of that was the one thing that I couldn’t find the courage to talk to Big Daddy about.  I know now that if I had told Big Daddy about what I was feeling, he would have eased my concerns just like he always does and always did.  But, I couldn’t put those thoughts into words, so I put Big Daddy off.

Big Daddy confided to mutual friends that he thought the problem was him.  That I was putting him off because I didn’t know how to let him down.

That couldn’t have been further from the truth.

I was afraid that the me Big Daddy knew, from ICQ and the phone wouldn’t be the me he found.  And I had this inkling that Big Daddy and I could be so great together, I was afraid of the failure that could come.  What if we met and one of us found the other intolerable? Or revolting?  Of course, I figured it would be him finding me intolerable or revolting and I didn’t think I was able to take that rejection.  Even though my stalling left Big Daddy feeling rejected.

When Big Daddy came into town for the chat room meet up, I was at home just a little ways away.  He respected my need for space and shyness and despite wanting to, he didn’t come to see me.  Despite threatening me, our friends didn’t drag me to him. I spent that day knowing that all I had to do was get in the car and I could be in Big Daddy’s arm, but  fear kept me grounded at home.

That night, I called Big Daddy after the meet up.  He was sleeping at the airport.  In a phone booth.  I love that about him.   We talked while he dozed and I was regretful that I had let the opportunity pass.  I realized that I’d never know how great we could be if I didn’t move further.  I had to push past the fear.

One night in August, I was home alone again.  My parents were camping with my siblings and my neighbor was underage and had a WILD party.  He’d managed to cut his head open in the midst of a drink induced temper tantrum. I was trying to decide the best way to help him and called Big Daddy for advice.

“I wish you were here”, I said to Big Daddy.

“Be careful what you say,” he said. “Because I’ll get in the car if you say the word.”

But it was very late and I was very practical.

“I’ll be fine”, I said.  “I just feel better talking to you.”

In the dark in the kitchen, talking on the beige phone on the wall with the cord stretched out from a family of phone pacers, I was connected to Big Daddy as I watched the goings on at my neighbors house.  I got ready to get off the phone because it was so late.  And that’s when it happened.  There in the dark. In the kitchen. On the beige phone.

“I love you,” he said. My knees wobbled and turned to jelly.  I slid quietly down the side of the fridge to the floor.

“I love you, too,” I said.  And I did.  And this playing coy stuff was going to have to stop.  Because rejection or not, I wasn’t sure I could live without Big Daddy for one more minute.

Companionable –adjective

possessing the qualities of a good companion; pleasant to be with; congenial.