A Cup of Comfort for Couples (6 page)

A nurse approached. “What are you looking for?”

“Screens to practice breastfeeding,” Jeff said.

“For Noah?”

“Yeah.”

The nurse looked uncomfortable. “He seemed hungry earlier, so he's been fed. I'm sorry; we didn't know you were coming today.”

Jeff and I stood in silence. We journeyed to the NICU each day, making arrangements for our oldest son to stay somewhere while we drove the 15 miles to visit. We tried to time our visits to coincide with feedings, usually the only times Noah was awake.

I sat in the rocking chair Jeff pulled up behind me. I laid my head back and looked up at the ceiling, using gravity to force my tears back. I did not want to cry today. Today, everything was going to be better.

“We can still hold him, though?” I heard Jeff ask.

“Oh, yeah, no problem,” the nurse said.

Jeff picked up our tiny son, untangling the cords that measured Noah's vital signs, and laid him in my arms. I put my nose in the crease of his neck and inhaled, nuzzling his cheek next to mine.

Jeff sat across from us in another rocking chair a nurse had pulled up. Halfway through our hour-long visit, I offered him Noah and left to go pump in the NICU's pumping room.

Breastfeeding your baby while not actually having your baby with you is not an easy task. Every two to three hours I would dutifully hook up the breast pump, gather my measly cc's of milk, and refrigerate them until visiting time. I usually needed to pump while at the hospital to cover our travel time.

After my breasts had been tugged empty, I bottled up the breast milk to take to the NICU fridge. It needed to be labeled and placed in a tray with Noah's name on it.

I lined up the bottles on the counter above the refrigerator. There were six three-ounce bottles. None were more than half full. I opened the refrigerator and glanced inside to see several large bottles filled to the top with breast milk. I stared at my bottles. I had fought hard for that milk. I wanted full bottles.
Six half-full bottles will make three full
bottles
, I said to myself, twisting the cap off the first two bottles. I turned, knocking the bottles over. My breast milk spread across the counter.

Jeff had come up behind me, ready to go. He stared. First at the puddle, then at my face.

“Just go ahead,” Jeff said. He placed a hand on my shoulder. “I'll clean it up.”

I nodded. I waited by the nearest elevator, every so often wiping my face on my sleeve.

In silence, we journeyed down the elevator, through the halls, across the skyway, down the other elevator, and into the parking garage.

“Just cry,” Jeff said in the darkness of the garage.

“I don't want to! It's our anniversary, and I have makeup on, and I don't sleep, and it's a special day, and we don't even get to do anything really special,” I blubbered, my face in my hands, standing beside our car's passenger door.

Jeff hugged me, and I let him, pushing the side of my face against his chest. I breathed in his scent, a mix between the soap and deodorant he's used since I first met him when I was fourteen and he was sixteen. And underneath, that slight musky smell of our adolescence reminded me of our first high school dance, our make-out sessions, and the day we said good-bye when he went off to college. The scent reminded me of the afternoon we got mar- ried, when the rhododendrons outside the church bloomed in brilliant fuchsia and delicate violet and the sun warmed us as we drove away together.

“Well,” he said.

“Well, what?” I breathed in again.

“Maybe it's not about that.”

“About what?” I took another breath.

“Maybe an anniversary isn't about makeup and romance and fancy food. Maybe it's about remembering.”

My tears had stopped. “Remembering what?”

“Remembering why we got married in the first place. Remembering to just be here.”

Stunned, calmed, I looked up at him.

“So what do we do? For our anniversary?” I asked.

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

As we drove out of the parking garage into the sunlight, I held his hand. Sometimes, that's all you can do. It was the perfect anniversary gift.

—
Kelly Wilson

Come Rain or Come Shine

“H
ow ya' doin' on this side?” asks my husband, Jean-Marc, as he walks by me with a bucket full of water for the hundredth time.

“I think I just saw an Orca swim by,” I tease.

“Tell him to grab a mop and help out.”

Usually Tuesdays are fun. Usually on Tuesdays our kids are in school, my husband has the day off, and we indulge in date day. A normal Tuesday date day involves hiking, biking, playing gin rummy, or watching reruns of
Match Game
. But ask anyone in Rhode Island and they'll tell you that Tuesday, March 30, 2010, was anything but normal.

Rhode Islanders had just endured an extremely rainy summer followed by an equally rainy winter. So instead of a spring where snow melted slowly enough to be absorbed into the ground, our yards were saturated. Nine inches of rainfall the week before caused local lakes and rivers to fill to capacity, leaving the seven inches of rainfall to come with nowhere to go.

“Did you know it's raining outside?” Jean-Marc asks rhetorically as he returned to his post on the other side of the basement with his empty bucket.

“Have I mentioned how un-fun this is?” I reply.

“How un-fun is it?” he yells in his best
Match
Game
studio-audience voice.

“It's so un-fun that I'd rather be in Cancun!”

Even the sound of the wet vac being turned on doesn't drown out the echo of his laughter.

Fourteen and a half years prior — before marriage, kids, and mortgage — we had been a couple of carefree twenty-something-year-olds living in sin and vacationing in Cancun, Mexico. The trip had been our first “vacation for two” and only my second time outside the United States. For the first two days, Eduardo served us
cervasas
on the beach as we soaked up the sun and booked excursions to local sites.

On day three, the clouds rolled in.

On day four, after the bus dropped us off at an ecological park, the heavens opened up and we wasted seven hours crammed in a gift shop with a hundred other tourists all waiting for the buses to return.

By day six, we had spent all our
pesos
on Doritos, chocolate chip cookies, and Coca Cola, hung the “
No
Molestar
” sign on our hotel room door, and watched
muchos
episodes of
Scooby Doo
dubbed in Spanish.

“I can't stand the rain . . .” sings my husband, walking by with another bucket full of Rhode Island rainfall.

I pick up my now-filled tub and follow him up the stairs. “Purple rain, purple rain . . .”

Outside, the storm pelts us from all directions as we let the water gush down our driveway like a double Niagara Falls.

“Raindrops keep falling on my head . . .”

“Red rain is pouring down, pouring down all over me . . .”

“Wait!” cheers Jean-Marc. “I think it's stopped!”

“You're inside again,” I tell him.

“I knew it seemed too good to be true.”

I lead us back down the stairs, and upon reaching the last step I notice a new little trail of water. “You've got to be kidding me! Another leak?”

My husband kisses my forehead. “By Saturday, it'll be like this never happened.”

“Are you insane? If this keeps up, I'll drown by Thursday.”

“Turn that frown upside-down,
muchacha
.”

“How can you stay so cheery?”

“We survived Cancun, we can survive this. Besides, the newest leak is on your side.”

Before I can swat him with a nearby towel, he zips around the corner.

“
Viva
Cancun
,” my husband shouts as he turns on the wet vac again.

As I use the mop to sop up water from the newest leak, my thoughts return to our last night in Cancun. The loud rain had subsided, the fierce winds had calmed, and for the first time in days, we believed we would finally get a good, albeit lumpy, night's sleep. A couple hours later, however, we both awoke to the rhythmic sound of
drip
-
drip
-
drip
.

Clicking on the light, we searched the room for the origin of the noise and found it beginning in the roof and landing directly into Jean-Marc's sneaker. We marveled at Mother Nature's aim and accuracy, then replaced Jean-Marc's sneaker with the room's wastebasket. We snuggled back into bed, clicked out the light, and allowed the drip to lull us back to dreamland.

Drip
.
Drip
.
Drip
.
Splink
.

“What the — ?”

Another scavenger hunt of the room revealed a second leak, so we utilized the ice bucket to collect those drops. By morning, we had enlisted the help of a second ice bucket, a plastic cup, and a soda bottle to prevent our room from becoming the hotel's first indoor swimming pool. And despite the shining sun, our attention could not be distracted from the numerous overturned lounge chairs, knocked over signs, and uprooted trees.

“
Hola
,
senorita
,” says Jean-Marc, jolting me back to our present-day flood. “I hope this little
huracan
will not keep you from visiting us again.”

I laugh.

Jean-Marc smiles too. “There's the smile I love so much. After you,
gringa
.”

As we lug our buckets up the stairs once more, my husband changes to a French accent. “Oooh la, la! Look at zee
deriere
, de Madame.
Tres
mignon
.”

Outside, he switches to English. “Iceberg, dead ahead!”

Inside again, he taps me on the shoulder. “Excuse me, which way to the lido deck?”

“Five fathoms down this way, sir.”

We kiss and return to our respective basement posts. As the wet vac drowns out the sound of my husband singing “La Cucaracha” off key, I think of all the storms we've weathered since that trip to Cancun. Planning a wedding. Buying a house. Post-partum depression. A child with Asperger's syndrome. The passing of Jean-Marc's parents. And though I know these are probably just the tip of the iceberg of what is yet to come, I won't sink into despair. Instead, I'll pick up my mop, sop up some water, squeeze it into the bucket, and know that by this Saturday today's adventure will be just another drop in the bucket. Because the love Jean-Marc and I share is a lifeboat that is strong enough to weather us through any storm together.

—
Judy L. Adourian

The Taming of the Green-Eyed Monster

S
everal months ago, my husband of thirty-three years told me, “You have until I'm sixty to stop worrying that I'm going to fall for another woman. No one will want me then.” He laughed.

By that time, we will have been married thirty-eight years. John believes it's time I finally trust that he is devoted to me and only me. I agree, but we'll see.

My insecurities probably started as a toddler. Mom tells a story of storming into a lounge, me on her hip, and challenging my father to get off the barstool next to the pretty brunette. “You'd better be home before we get there,” she said before storming back out. She'd known my dad would be meeting this woman for a week, and couldn't wait to catch him at it. Dad did beat us home. But he went out and met other women again, and again, and again. My mother eventually moved him out, into a furnished singles apartment, while he “worked.” She hung his clothes in the closet, bought him linens, put sandwich makings into the refrigerator — even stocked the bar. She was still in love with him. And Dad, I remain convinced, was truly in love with her. He would have never moved out on his own. He swore till the day he died that he never “played nookie” with any other woman while he and Mom were together. Mom laughs, “He started fooling around on me while we were in high school. I even broke off our engagement because of it.”