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Tuesday, January 24, 2017

He's seen my uterus; I've seen his colon

Marriage has all kinds of phases and milestones that I never, ever would have guessed were a thing when D and I wed almost 20 years ago.

Our "honeymoon" period ended, I think, pretty much immediately after our honeymoon when my "having a difficult time adjusting to marriage" phase began.  It lasted about six months and seemed to dissipate once we got our cats and I entered my MAT program.

We had a good run of years in which things seemed normal.  We worked; we traveled.

In 2003, we entered the "babymoon phase" which lasted all of 38 seconds and was soon eclipsed by my "something terrible is going to happen to this pregnancy" phase, which lasted until N was safely born.  At that point, D entered his "can't cope with fatherhood phase" and I began the "must be the perfect mother" period.

I lived in the "untreated anxiety" stage for a good 18 months.

When the boys were born, we hit the "husband has seen his wife's uterus flopped up on her abdomen" milestone.

Yes, that is a thing.

Since having children, D and I have moved back and forth between the "we are so thankful for them" phase and the "why the f*ck did we have them?" phase.  Running this gauntlet lasts awhile, I think.  

D has had his fits and starts of the "I'm not happy in my job" phase, and I've dealt with the "I feel like I want to contribute more in the professional world but not too much" stage.  We've gone through one "I lost a parent" stage.

Today, D had a colonoscopy, and I hit the "I've seen photos of my husband's colon" marriage milestone.

That whole endoscopy thing is all kinds of awkward, and maybe the nurse thought me a little strange when I asked if I should shake him or kick him to try to wake him up from his post-scope stupor.  Maybe other wives phrase their tenderness differently?

But inside my heart, in spite of the awkward, I felt something special about this colon milestone.  It felt special to me that we're on this shared path to old age.  That we are there and have been there for each other.  I helped him put on his underwear in an anesthetic fog, and he has picked me up off the floor when I vasovagal-ed while on the toilet.

There is nothing pretty about it, and it isn't glamorous or exciting or really anything that I would willingly submit to if I knew in advance what was coming.  I cannot, in any way, feel sentimental about this because it is in large part ugly and messy and disgusting.

And yet it is a little tiny miracle, I think.  A little something holy.  

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