As this will be my closest post to Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share this piece about candlelight and diapers ...I am fairly certain that my most memorable Valentine’s Day took place in 1998, although there is much about it I cannot remember. I think we went to dinner – spaghetti, maybe? And I’m willing to bet my husband Mark brought me flowers (because he’s a romantic) and chocolate (because he’s smart).
Here’s what I do remember – I was 12 days away from delivering our first baby, and I was enormously, unbelievably great with child. Mark was attentive and sweet, and if he thought the hormones had made me completely crazy (which they had), he didn’t show it. What I will never forget is the moment we shared the sudden, bittersweet epiphany that this would be the last Valentine’s Day we’d spend as just the two of us. It was thrilling, but more than a little scary, too. So this was my Valentine to Mark …
You are ready to be a father, I know. But you still want – need – to be my husband, my beloved. Will we ever again lose ourselves completely in each other’s arms?
No. We will never be the same.
From now until forever there will always be Someone Else, this new, intrusive little wonder, occupying our time and our hearts. It can be no other way.
But oh, my Love, the romance is far from over. It has barely begun. Do you not see? Now the ties that bind are crazy glue. We are more than a man and his wife. We are a family. You are still my lover, still my friend. But now … wow.
Now you are my baby’s father.*
10 years later, I can look at the two children who mess up our house and light up our hearts, and I can smile at Valentine’s Day, 1998. We felt like we were on the top of a very wild roller coaster, and it turns out we were. We were also in for the romance of our lives.
Carolyn Arends
www.carolynarends.com
*excerpted from We’ve Been Waiting For You, by Carolyn Arends © 2002 by Carolyn Arends, published by J. Countryman, a division of Thomas Nelson
3 comments:
So beautiful...nothing to say except, Wow!
Gorgeous! But just wait, Carolyn. Empty nest time is just around the corner (well, maybe not 'just' but it will come sooner than you think), and with just the two of you again, it will be sweeter than ever.
I know this love, too. I always get so excited when I see (read?) other people who are as crazy in love as my husband and I are!
YEAH!!!
We, too, have two little monkeys who joined the party and mess up the house (Steve was doing a good job of that all by himself - he didn't really need the help!) and have caused me to rethink my mother's wisdom (did I actually just say to my daugther: "Do it! Not now but RIGHT now!)
So now, when we dance in the kitchen to the music only we two hear, there are two little monkeys hanging on to our legs.
I wouldn't change it for the world.
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