Mondays at Eleven

a Love After Babies reflection

I tiptoe down the stairs, careful not to disturb the still sleeping children. I know what I will see as I round the corner—my husband, Brad, sitting at the kitchen table with the well-worn pages of his Bible open, illuminated only by soft candlelight. There’s a freshly brewed pot of coffee waiting for me and steam still rises from the coffee in his favorite Superman mug. A candle is lit, a seasonal one he stumbled upon at Target. Pumpkin Bourbon is a year round scent in our home now, and this morning it wafts up the stairs beckoning me to come down. It’s sweet like warmed maple syrup poured over Sunday morning pancakes.

“Grab a seat babe,” Brad says as he shoves crumbs from last night’s garlic bread towards the LEGO pieces on the other side of the table. “Whatcha reading this morning?”

I’m slow to answer, because I want time to stand still. I’m exhausted from getting up three times last night with our toddler. Once the sun rises, the rush begins. But when he grabs my hand from across the table, my heart stills. I breathe a sigh of relief. I know this calm will be gone in an instant. Our oldest child will run up the stairs as soon as his OK-to-Wake alarm clock flashes at 6:30. Demands for milk and Cheerios await, but for now the only face in the world is his.

 

***

“Bedtime was horrible tonight. I wish you were here,” I sent Brad a text as I pulled up my weighted blanket over my chest. 

 It’s 8:28 p.m. and I just crawled into bed after tucking in the last of our three kids.

“Be there soon, Babe,” I read his reply just five minutes after I sent my S.O.S. He’s just at his weekly karate class, but when he’s not home for bedtime it reminds me of Those Dark Days.

For two years, Brad and I went to bed separately. One frigid January afternoon, he came home from work with tears pooling in his eyes and three months severance pay. After five months of unemployment, he found a temporary job working a swing shift (making far less than what we needed) leaving me to solo parent our three young kids every night. Requests were relentless, and I served sippy cups of water and bedtime snacks like a disgruntled Wal-Mart cashier on a holiday weekend. When I bathed the children, my bathroom floor looked like a scene from Jaws meets Titanic.

I limped my way into bed each night, knowing there was so much I could do in those late night hours while he worked. Read a book? Take a long bubble bath? Watch Gilmore Girls on Netflix again? Actually go to sleep early? But the only thing I wanted was him.  I craved his fingers gently sweeping up and down my back as I lay in bed. I’d close my eyes and dream about the easier seasons, the ones that didn’t require solo parenting, beans and rice dinners, or lonely Netflix binges. Each night I threw myself a pity party. I forced my eyes shut and tried to get the sleep I desperately needed. Pure exhaustion would take over. It wasn’t until after midnight when he pulled back the covers, slipped into bed, and curled up next to me that all the tension in my body left. When he kissed me on my forehead, I could finally rest.

I’d wake up four hours later to get ready for work. With a new mortgage and a third child, this 5:00 A.M. shift at my part time job was mandatory. Sleep was short, but Brad was steady, the cadence of his beating heart next to mine enough fuel for my day. Frequently, a child ended up in our bed with a middle of the night nursing session, a bad dream, or growing pains. I couldn’t afford to snooze my alarm, so I’d trade the warmth of his body for the steam of the shower, peeling off my breast milk-soaked pajama top on the way to the bathroom. The only affection we exchanged was his midnight kiss and my whispered “I love you” before stumbling downstairs for my coffee tossed into a tumbler to-go. We were trapped in an unrehearsed tango of routine affection, stumbling our way to find a rhythm. These kisses were not like the ones we used to share. 

***

It’s Monday at eleven a.m. and our anger can’t be shoved under the rug any more. We’ve reached critical mass, and I’m about to explode. It’s our first marriage therapy session. We sat on two separate arm chairs, the emotional distance between us a Grand Canyon sized chasm.

“So guys, why are we here?” our counselor asks, a grandfatherly type who has been married 52 years with a wide array of experiences to back up his clinical expertise. At least we could agree on the same person to help us.

We don’t have an answer. At least not one that doesn’t involve four letter words or kindness. The silence is stunning and lasts longer than seems humanly possible. I wasn’t going to tell him about the fight we had the night before, how I feel like I’m sitting next to a stranger, how I don’t know how we got here, how I’m wondering if we will recover.

“Okay, let’s just pray.”

He asks God for the peace that surpasses understanding, while I silently beg Him for the same. The tears start streaming down my face and they don’t stop for the full hour. 

***

My first kiss with Brad was on a rooftop in Morocco. We were newly engaged and celebrating our new commitment to each other. The ras el hanout from our couscous at dinner still lingered in the air. We had been living in North Africa for a few months and this rooftop was our haven from the metropolis below. My apartment was right along the beach. From the roof, if we looked out far enough on a clear day, we could see where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea, the greens and blues marrying like a Monet painting. 

“What are you thinking right now?” I asked him, my heart beating like I had just run a marathon.

“I really want to kiss you,” he said.

“Okay, then–do it,” I replied. He walked over to pull me close to his chest. His lips touched mine and the breeze swept across our faces, blowing my shoulder-length curls across both our necks, the waves dancing below. Months later we walked hand-in-hand down the lantern lit cobblestone streets of Madrid.  We shared a steaming plate of seafood paella and pictured the day we’d return to Spain with our future kids. I wore a green and black knee-length dress when he kissed me in front of the fountain at the Plaza de España a week later before an afternoon bike ride through the Spanish gardens. We danced through ivy-covered iron gates in a sea of bougainvillea and coral roses in bloom. These days were a dream come true, a love awakened in season.

The testing hadn’t yet come. 

***

I had to stand on my tiptoes to kiss Brad on our wedding day. It was a rainy day in December and of course we had an outdoor ceremony.

People talk about how cold it was that day. My bridesmaids remember shivering in their strapless gowns. Cool rain fell from the sky, while Brad held an umbrella over us as we promised to take each other in sickness and in health, for better or for worse. The rain stopped just before the kiss.

Brad caressed my face with the softest hands as he pulled me closer to him. I had to stand on my tiptoes because the floral TOMS I insisted on wearing under my wedding dress did not give me the height I needed to reach him at 6’5’’. I remember the applause. I remember how his lips lingered long on mine, letting everyone know: I was his.

***

His grandfather died. Our first son was born. The car got totaled. A surprise pregnancy. His grandmother died. Another baby. The tumor came back. Not cancerous, but he needed surgery. COVID hit. I lost my job. Our baby needed surgery. His workplace became toxic. Depression raged. Insurance won’t cover occupational therapy. We only had $47 left in the bank at the end of each month. An emergency appendectomy. Six weeks in and out of the hospital.

Is this for better or for worse?

Was this how love matured?

***

Same time. Same place. Monday. 11 am. 

But now we are twelve weeks in, and we sit side by side on the fluffy gray couch, his arm brushed up against mine. 

“How was your weekend, guys?” our counselor asks. 

“You know, we actually did pretty well,” my husband offers as he looks at me and interlaces his fingers with mine. I look in his eyes and nod with a smile, because I’m finally coming up for air after a long, exhausting swim. 

We recount the conversation we had at the kitchen table Friday afternoon. One that took THREE WHOLE HOURS but ended with “I love you” instead of “leave me alone.” Each session we’ve been recounting the stresses that brought us here: financial struggle, family strife, quarantine, back-to- back babies. But we’ve been recounting our foundation too: rooftop kisses, Spanish strolls, the vows we made, Bible reading by candlelight. Our counselor tells us it’s normal to have conflict and we are thankful for his help as we work through the junk instead of abandoning it. Our list of gratitude is finally becoming longer than our list of offenses. 

***

Tonight our oldest has karate so dinner needs to be quick and easy. But also, hopefully, healthy? I pull out chicken to defrost from the freezer and make a mental note to start chopping vegetables by 3 p.m.  The toddler now sleeps through the night and Brad has a new job we think may be The Dream One. Each day has a laundry list of to-do’s before I even get out of the shower. Schedule the dentist appointment. Call my mom. Pay the garbage bill. Wash their karate uniforms. The sprint will begin soon. There’s teeth to brush, shoes to tie, lunches to pack and a drive across town to school. The morning rush mirrors those once frantic bedtimes. 

But Brad is still there at the kitchen table each morning. Still making the coffee. Still offering me his presence. 

This daybreak routine is reassuring and reliable, cultivated from a decade of togetherness, a new commitment to Monday’s at eleven, and a practiced, abiding love. His presence at the kitchen table—like his presence next to me in bed—is the stuff dreams are made of, too.  I take another sip of his perfectly brewed coffee and close my eyes, thankful. 

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*** Thank you for reading this on my new Substack. I’m thankful to continue my writing in this writer friendly space. As a reminder, you can find my old work at: karenmillerwriting.wordpress.com but from now on, this is the place you’ll want to be. Subscribe below to have each new post show up in your inbox.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Love After Babies".