Without balance, my postpartum emotions turn my life into a black hole and suck everything into it. I’m so grateful my husband has this ability to pull me out so easily with… logic. We balance each other out.
When I was too scared to leave the house with a baby, he pushed me to just try. Sometimes, it wasn’t so bad. This was a day I had to push him.
A beer under the stars, the warmth of the fire, and our tiny person looking like a marshmallow in a sleeping bag is what we’ve been dreaming of.
Our baby cried all night. Not even the adorable, warm marshmallow sleep suit and snuggling between us was not enough to just shut those eyes.
“Why?! Just go to sleep! Please?”
The next day, he napped with the tiny human while the dog and I scouted a good spot by the shore to fish. He got a little sleep, and I was still running on fumes. Still, I wasn’t ready go, and he wanted nothing more but to be in bed at home.
My husband is not easily swayed with words so, I had to take a different approach. I just fished. After one, he wasn’t convinced and went for a walk. He was barely ten feet away when I caught number two. He was annoyed. He baited his hook, pulled his arm back to cast, and that’s when a third fish decided to bite my line.
“Got another!”
“You dick!” he said to me.
“Whoo! Here we go!” I squealed. The more I rubbed it in, the more he was pissed.
Eventually, he caught one. But he was still tired and hungry. As much fun as I was having, he gave me a time limit. I kept checking his watch, counting down my time. His watch read 12:00 and it was time to pack up. In that same second, I felt it. That tug on the line. I yanked back hard, turned my reel a few times saw my line swish back and forth from the fight below the surface.
“Whooo yeah! We got ourselves another one!” I was high on lake water. “Oh, high score, what’s that mean? Did I break it?”
I felt like my old self again.
After a shower and food from the good Mexican place down the road, he showed me how to clean the fish.
When our toddler’s bedtime came, he finished the fish and I took the kid. When I crept out of the tiny human’s room, he reached the top of the stairs. We met in bed. Exhausted from our adventure.
“Goodnight. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
We kissed and laid our heads down. Closed our eyes and found each other’s hand as we drifted to sleep.