Parenting has this way of exposing a part of who you are in ways both beautiful and terrifying.
As in, Wow! Who knew I had this gift for creative teaching? Or, Who knew I could handle this amount of laundry and still emerge with enough panties to fight the day?
But also, as author Elizabeth Stone has written, Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
So some of you parents are thrilled that your kids are home. And some of you would like to be thrilled, you really would! You are definitely working on being thrilled.
Especially if they would go fight somewhere else? Or maybe pick up their cereal bowls.
This morning I walked through my house, trying not to see things.
I tried not to see the underwear packaging left on the floor by my two teenage boys. The clothes my daughter left on the bathroom floor. The cereal bowl on the counter of a few floating Honey Nut Cheerios.
Like most American women, I am a total sucker for rom-coms and TV drama with a smattering of romance. Who doesn’t love someone being swept off their feet, and laughing at all the stupid ways it goes wrong? Even after 18 years of marriage, I still love…love. Plus, there’s this (usually false?) idea that you’re getting a glimpse of the private stuff we never talk about.
As a writer and real person, I like to think myself immune from the illusions of a perfect husband. When a guy delivers an ingenious, sentimental line, I sometimes imagine the scriptwriter scrawling on a legal pad, grinning because she got it just right. (And if he’s saying something just right from a woman’s perspective, there’s a decent chance the scriptwriter was female.)
But a podcast recently pointed out something else to me. In Hollywood, couples–even married ones–don’t usually have a ton of needed lead time to…well. To get it on (fade to black).
A few weeks ago, in the middle of this crazy cancer scare, my husband and I went on a date. It was the one where, after Mexican, we had to stop by Walgreens for eyedrops because we were so raw from crying. My heart felt doubled over inside.
But in the restaurant, over bottomless chips and salsa, my husband gently pointed out something in the questions I was asking. He does some conflict coaching and mediation on the side, and explained that our conversation reminded him of listening to two parties in an argument. Often, he can see the perspective of both sides. “But sometimes they would see things differently if they had that graciousness that just greases the wheels of a healthy relationship.” (This is my paraphrase. My brain in that time was a big pot of mashed potatoes.)
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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