I forget that my husband is a human.
I don't mean that he's some animal or something like that.
I mean it's easy for me to forget he is a human being with human limitations.
To me, he's Superman.
He's always been Superman.
There is nothing he can't do.
Kill a bug with a single blow with a newspaper.
Able to climb up the the tallest rungs to get the Christmas gifts I stashed in the upper echelons of our closet.
Able to walk a dog and toddler simultaneously.
Last night, my husband hurt his back and shoulder. To be more precise, he hurt both sometime last week but like a dog, did not display or complain about it until it was beyond a normal human's pain threshold.
Meanwhile, unbeknowst to me, I had him carrying our daughter with me ala pig on a stick style tossing her onto the bed, taking out an outrageous sum of recycling I was hoarding for some reason and walking 18 blocks with the dog to pick up pizza.
I felt awful.
The kicker...
While talking about push gifts and he mentioned how I didn't like my gift. Don't get me wrong, it was a wonderful gift. It was too wonderful. He got me a spa certificate that practically could have paid our mortgage payment for the month. I felt awful receiving it not because it wasn't something I would have enjoyed but because I was postpartum, didn't want anyone to touch me anymore than I was already and I was panicking about how much he actually spent on this gift. I am not a person that wants fancy expensive things. It's not that I don't think I deserve these things. I just think that I have what I need and that money could towards something more logical or practical.
I know this is all going back to my childhood and I know that he was really really just showing me how much he loves me but I so did not want it and I responded badly at the time.
Well, the kicker with all this was he asked me, "What would you have wanted?"
My response, "At the time, I just wanted to feel like I wasn't alone and that I didn't have to do everything."
There was silence.
I know! I'm an idiot. I mean, here is this man who is suffering from back pain and shoulder pain for a week and only told me that day and I have the gallstones to tell him that during the first few months of my postpartum, I felt alone.
I mean, this man takes care of our child. He takes care of our puppy. He keeps the house in fairly clean condition and even has time to educate our kid and help her learn the basics, (like toots are funny and poops are smelly). He is continuing his education and he takes care of me.
He is my Superman and instead of being grateful I tell him how alone I felt during my postpartum.
I'm not discrediting my feelings. I still feel the same about the time period. It was a hard time for me. Even with the preparations and my pleas of assistance, I still did the majority of cooking and caring. During that time period, he also was out for long periods of time for his job. I understood but it also was very lonely. On a good note, I think it helped with my bond with my daughter.
I spent the night rubbing his back and shoulder along with tending to our kid thinking about how I don't show my husband enough how much I love him.
Part of my lenten sacrifice is to be more grateful and here I am forgetting to be grateful for the man I cannot picture my life without.
I'm such an idiot.
Today, I wrote a note and left it under the frying pan on the counter top for him.
I hope today isn't just a fluke and I remember to show him my love and appreciation a little more.
We used to leave love notes to each other all the time.
Maybe I should start this up again.
