Next up were the Straight Fit. They were much better. And last he tried on the Boot Cut, which were my personal favorite but caused him to do some sort of move to show me how uncomfortable they could potentially be. I had no idea he was planning to perform gymnastics in his new jeans. But apparently he spends his time in jeans doing a lot of squat moves and leg lifts. He can kick and stretch just like Sally O’Malley.
And then, because I am me, I suggested he try on some more. He said he was finished, and I silently vowed that our days of shopping together were over. Just because we vowed to love each other for better or for worse does not mean we have to love each other in a shopping situation.
Especially when he saw the price tag and couldn’t get over jeans that cost $54. But that’s probably because he thinks all my jeans only cost $15.
(See chapter 7 on budgeting.)
So we left Gap and drove home to order them online because online orders were 25 percent off, plus I had a coupon for an additional $20 discount that I’d left in my desk drawer because I really wanted to use it to buy something for myself and not jeans for someone who doesn’t even get excited about new clothing and acts like he’s doing these jeans a favor by allowing them into his closet.
(Don’t judge me about the coupon. I’m just being honest. It was going to go toward the purchase of a sweater that was in need of a good, loving home because I am a humanitarian.)
About an hour after we got home from Gap, Perry grabbed his keys and said he was going to Whole Earth to buy some new socks. And, RUDE, he didn’t even ask me to go with him.
Personal shoppers get no respect.
Which is why I’ve decided to retire. Until the next time he needs new jeans.
CHAPTER 14
And Baby Makes Three
LIKE A LOT OF YOU, I grew up in the age of the talk show. Phil Donahue, Oprah, Maury Povich, Sally Jesse Raphael and her red glasses. People airing all manner of personal business and throwing skeletons out of the closet with no shame.
And there were always couples with marital problems on those shows who shared that they decided to have a baby because “we thought it would bring us closer together.” Or teenage girls who got pregnant in an attempt to keep their boyfriends. There were also people who were there for free paternity tests, but that’s an entirely different subject.
The point is that even before I had a child of my own, I thought this was flawed logic. How could bringing in a helpless little person make two people grow closer if that’s all they had going for them? It seemed like the equivalent of declaring you’d like your house to be cleaner so you’ve decided to adopt a family of monkeys.
I mean, sure, I guess there are times when people initially bond over sharing a life-shaking event. Look at Jack and Rose in Titanic. They found true love in forty-eight hours on a sinking ship, but in the end she couldn’t even make room for him on that piece of broken door. (Really, Rose? You couldn’t scoot over about six inches for the LOVE OF YOUR LIFE? His heart could have totally gone on if you hadn’t been such a door hog.) You have to think that long-term, Rose might have whined that Jack couldn’t provide her with the luxury she’d become accustomed to, or complained that she was tired of him being an artist, and the whole thing about being from different worlds wouldn’t have been nearly as romantic. Or maybe I’m just too much of a skeptic.
I really don’t mean to compare having a baby with being trapped on a sinking ship. They are totally different experiences, unless you count the fact that both can make you feel completely helpless and at the mercy of something bigger than you, and possibly like you might die.
Perry and I had been married for five years before we decided to have a baby. (You can read the whole entire story in my first book, Sparkly Green Earrings, available in bookstores or on a garage sale table near you right now. Probably at a very discounted rate.) We were in our early thirties, and it seemed like it was time to start a family. At least that’s what our parents kept telling us.
Apparently we are a fertile people because I was pregnant the very next month. And then I had a miscarriage. Perry and I were both heartbroken, but I think these things affect women differently than men. Because while we both experienced a loss, it was something that happened inside my body. Between the hormones and the sadness, something shifted in me. Depression settled in, and I spent a lot of time just wondering how soon I could go back to bed. I was a far cry from the generally happy person Perry was used to.
I had fallen and couldn’t get up. If only I’d had one of those helpful pagers like they advertise on TV.
Truthfully, I look back now and realize that whole experience marked our marriage in a permanent, lasting way. I can almost draw a line between “before miscarriage” versus “after miscarriage.” We’d had arguments and financial struggles and other problems in the first five years of our marriage because, well, that’s marriage. But this was the first really hard, heartbreaking thing we’d experienced together. This was the first thing we couldn’t just decide to buck up and be positive about.
(Why did I just use the term buck up? Have I watched too many Happy Days reruns recently?)
The morning of my scheduled D & C, Perry drove me to the hospital and was right there holding my hand before I went in and the moment I woke up after it was over. And then, because he knows my love language, he drove me through Shipley’s to get a chocolate donut on the way home. I was still slightly altered and/or high from the anesthesia, but I kept reaching for his hand and saying, “I JUST LOVE YOU SO MUCH. I REALLY LOVE YOU.” Because apparently medication makes me indifferent to pitch and decibel level. But I was speaking the absolute truth. I’d never loved him more because up to that point in our marriage, I don’t know that I’d ever been so aware of how much he loved me.
It was the moment I realized he didn’t just love me when I was fun or pretty or cooking spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. (I make unbelievable spaghetti and meatballs. It would make you fall in love with me too.) He loved me when I was hurting and depressed and crying tears that didn’t seem to end and wearing the same pajamas four days in a row. This sounds so weird to say since we’d been married for five years at that point, but it was the first time I realized he really was going to stick with me for better or for worse. We were in this thing even when it got really ugly and maybe smelled a little bad. And by “it,” I mean me.
We walked through a difficult six months and came out the other side stronger and better. It was like we’d transitioned to a real, grown-up version of marriage. And so when I got pregnant again, we believed we were more ready than ever to take on the monumental task of raising a human.
Yes. Like you can ever be prepared for that type of responsibility or sacrifice.
At one point about halfway through my pregnancy with our daughter, Caroline, Perry was in Colorado chaperoning about sixty high school students on a ski trip. Normally I would have been on the trip with him, but I had a host of issues with riding a bus for seventeen hours with high school kids before I ever got pregnant, so there wasn’t really even a remote possibility that I was going to attempt that kind of torture while carrying a child. He’d arranged to have a few other female chaperones on the trip, but they’d all had to cancel at the last minute.
Perry, bless him, ended up being the chaperone and small group leader for ten fourteen-year-old girls during that trip. He’d call me every night after he got back to his hotel room and report that they’d put gel in his hair or that they’d used something called a “straight iron” on him. On the last night of the trip he called to tell me that someone had a pair of scissors, and he wasn’t sure what happened, but the girls all started cutting one another’s hair and the next thing he knew, three of them were crying in the bathroom while the other girls gathered outside the door and tried to console them with loving statements like “It will grow back” or “It doesn’t look that uneven from the left side.”
In short, he was slightly traumatized by the whole experience.
Of course, it wasn’t like I really needed the ultrasound to tell me I was having a girl, because I’d known that for a long time, thanks to the science of peeing on some Drano crystals and seeing them turn a lovely shade of seafoam green. Not to mention that I felt like I was getting some divine inspiration through Neil Diamond every time I heard “Sweet Caroline” on the radio.
On the way to the doctor’s office that Friday morning, Perry looked at me and said, “I know we’re having a girl.” I thought maybe Neil Diamond had been speaking to him, too, because Neil just has a way (to move me, Cherry), but he said that he knew when he was on that ski trip surrounded by all the chaos and squeals of those girls that God was preparing him for life with a daughter. And as much as he didn’t understand all the drama and the high-pitched voices and the nail polish and why they thought it was a good idea to cut each other’s hair, he knew that a baby girl was exactly what he wanted.
And, sure enough, there was a girl on the way. When she made her arrival on August 3, 2003, our lives were forever changed —and so much for the better. But please note I said for the better, not the easier. Bringing a third person into a marriage can be a challenge even under the best of circumstances.
Especially when you feel like your husband still gets to hunt or fish whenever he wants and you’re home with a toddler who screams loudly just because she likes to hear the sound of her own voice or drops a sippy cup on the floor forty-eight times because gravity is a new and exciting concept.
I remember Gulley telling me she’d never disliked her husband more than when their son was two weeks old and she was up at three in the morning changing poopy crib sheets for the fourth time that night. Then, to make matters worse, she heard a loud chomping, cracking sound and realized the dog was eating one of the wheels off the bassinet they’d borrowed from a friend, which was when she sank to the ground in tears and utter defeat. All while her spouse slept peacefully in the next room.
In his defense, he had to go to work the next day and her new job was to stay home with the baby, but that’s just it. As a new mom, your life changes overnight. Your priorities change, you forget to brush your teeth, you aren’t sure how you’re ever going to balance all your new responsibilities, and it’s overwhelming. Not to mention that your body that used to be almost purely recreational has become much like a dairy cow but not as delicate and petite.
It’s a change. And life isn’t just you and your husband sleeping in on Saturday mornings but instead becomes ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS to see who gets to sleep late or who has to get up with the baby in the middle of the night or who has to change the sixth diaper that would make even a person without olfactory senses gag.
And you can’t help but wonder what you used to do with all your spare time. What was life like before you had to hire a babysitter or sweet-talk the grandparents if you wanted to go out to dinner or to a movie together? It’s a distant memory.
But Perry and I, like most couples before us, adjusted to our new normal. We made schedules and took shifts and learned to share the responsibilities that came with our new role as Mama and Daddy. And, in what is either a high or a low, we even began referring to each other occasionally as “Mama” and “Daddy.”
Ultimately, Caroline has brought us closer together and made our marriage stronger because we share this remarkable little person. There are no two people in the world who love her and want the best for her like we do, and we’re united in that. And sometimes when Perry is getting on my last nerve, I’ll see him helping Caroline with her homework or cuddled up with her on the couch, and I’ll fall in love with him all over again because I’m reminded what a good daddy he is and how he loves our girl.
I think having a child is like various tests a couple will face throughout a lifetime together. You either let the struggles and challenges draw you closer in or create resentment. The key is having a good foundation of friendship and respect and love.
And a whole lot of prayer for God to cover everything with his grace.
And maybe remembering to make room for the love of your life on the floating door when it feels like the ship is going down.
CHAPTER 15
I Would Do Anything for Love, but I Won’t Shoot That
YOU KNOW HOW YOU see those older couples who play golf together? Usually on a commercial for either adult diapers or Viagra? Perry and I will never be one of those couples. And hopefully not just because we don’t play golf.
When we were dating, lo, those many years ago, I enthusiastically went to the ranch with Perry. I thought it was kind of cozy and romantic to sit in a deer blind with him and watch the sun come up as we leaned in close to each other and Perry whispered sweet sentiments in my ear, such as, “See that buck? He’s too young to shoot this year.”
But after about a year of dating, some of the novelty began to wear off. I do not enjoy any activity that begins at five thirty in the morning, even if it involves bacon and eggs. And hunting does not. Plus, Perry began to treat me more like a real hunting partner as my skill level grew, so instead of whispering to each other, I was told to “be quiet!” and “quit moving so much!”
Eventually I completely gave up on being a morning hunter and opted for the evening hunt instead. It was also around this time that Perry decided I was accomplished enough to hunt on my own. So he’d put me in a deer blind by myself and then drive off to his own tripod somewhere, where he could sit and commune quietly with nature instead of his girlfriend, who was apparently too loud and too fidgety. Old Love came early to the hunting scene.
This is the point when I began to pack my little camouflage hunting backpack with various InStyle and Glamour magazines, because what else was I going to do while I sat there for three hours by myself? Look at a bunch of deer milling around?
And I began to observe an interesting phenomenon. Perry always made sure he washed all our hunting clothes in scent-free laundry detergent. We had to skip the deodorant and spray ourselves down with something that can only be described as the scent of dirt. He surrounded the area with doe urine to mask any remaining scent because, according to hunters everywhere, deer have an incredibly sharp sense of smell.
However, my extensive research in the form of perusing fashion magazines while I sat in a deer blind led me to the conclusion that deer seemed to prefer the scent of Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds perfume, because all those perfume samples falling out of my magazines didn’t seem to inhibit their activity at all. Which made it seem kind of stupid that I’d spent all that time believing I had to smell like dirt.
(Did I really just reference Liz Taylor’s White Diamonds perfume? Apparently I was reading back issues of magazines from the mid-1980s.)
Since I have a mind for science (No. I don’t.), I decided to take my research even further and began to test the deer’s sensitivity to noise and movement. Specifically, I began to lean out the windows of the deer blind and yell, “HEY! HEY, DEER! OVER HERE! LOOK AT ME!”
And let me tell you, those deer would look up at me and go right back to eating oats.
The people on those hunting shows have been doing it ALL WRONG.
Because I am a giver, I shared my findings with Perry. I thought he would be thrilled to know that he could now wear Old Spice and blast music while he hunted. Not that he does either of those things even when he’s not hunting, but you know, he might have wanted to start.
But after I told him my scientific conclusions, he replied, “Well, clearly those deer are smart enough to realize that if you’re dumb enough to hang out the window and yell at them, you’re not planning to shoot them.”
Whatever. Like they can reason that out.
Part of the reas
on I’d decided I couldn’t shoot deer anymore was because of an incident that had happened the previous season. I’d agonized over shooting a doe that was out on the field of oats eating with all her doe friends, because I was afraid they’d all be so sad. But then I remembered Perry’s voice telling me we really needed more venison in the freezer to get us through the long, hard San Antonio winter, so I took the shot.
The doe dropped to the ground, and all her doe friends looked up for a minute and then went right back to eating. Seriously. Like they didn’t even care about what had just happened to their friend. They just acted like animals. And I decided I couldn’t emotionally handle shooting a deer ever again.
However, a pig was a different story.
South Texas is overrun with wild hogs. And before you go all Charlotte’s Web (But WILBUR!) on me, you need to know that they are not pink and cute. They are hairy and have tusks and will tear up a ranch like it’s their job. So you have to manage the hog population, especially since they also procreate like they’re part of the Duggar family.
So one evening as I sat reading about Gwyneth Paltrow’s new exercise regimen, I looked up and saw that there was a huge pack of wild hogs in front of me. I put down my magazine, picked up my gun, and aimed carefully. As soon as I made the shot, one of the biggest hogs in the pack dropped to the ground, and the rest of the pack ran back into the brush.
Looks like Mama is eating pork chops tonight.
I sat there staring at the pig lying in front of me to make sure it was really dead and I didn’t need to shoot it again. But it was stone-cold dead. I went back to reading about Gwyneth and her macrobiotic meals because I knew it would still be at least an hour before Perry would be back to pick me up.
(This is the other reason I stopped hunting with Perry. He’d leave me in that deer blind until way after dark. Which, one, was scary. And, two, meant that I couldn’t even read unless I pulled out my flashlight or some scary hitchhikers/serial killers showed up and lit a campfire nearby, offering me a little light to see by.)
The Antelope in the Living Room: The Real Story of Two People Sharing One Life Page 11
