Love + Family: The Birthday by Ashley Barron (best mystery novels of all time TXT) 📗

and my emotions were constantly leavingme with tear-streaked cheeks.

After a while, I’m not even sure all the fussbetween our parents was about the baby. I think the competitionmorphed into a battle for world domination or head cheerleader.

At least poorly behaved children could be putin a timeout. But ill-mannered parents? There wasn’t a thing myhusband and I could do except to wait it out.

All things considered, I suppose that periodin our lives was good practice for when our son and daughter becometeenagers. I’m only just beginning to accept how close they are tothat complicated transformation.

How can they be this old, already?

Ten years ago, on the night our son pushedhis way into this world, tiny and helpless, holding our hearts inhis newborn hands, my husband and I found a new closeness.

When the nurse settled all seven pounds,eight ounces of him into my trembling arms, I knew what it was tohold a miracle in my very own hands.

My husband had been sitting on the bed besideus, his body shaking with emotion, his head so close to mine histears rolled down my cheeks.

“Our child,” he had whispered.

It was my eyes, he would say, years later.The way I had looked at him as I sat there with our first-borncradled against my chest had delivered the precise coordinates ofhis new place in this world.

And what was the name of that new place?

Fear.

We were terrified, the two of us—and for allthe right reasons, mind you. After five years together, a handfulof hours on a narrow hospital bed had transformed us from couple tofamily.

Once we had weathered the first few months ofbeing new parents, we were more determined than ever to ride outthe pop-up emotional storms in our marriage with grace, calm, andunited goals.

There will always be laughter in ourhome. We had made a choice to put those words in our ceremony,and we renewed our vow to honor them.

Most of the time, it was easy. Inspirationwas all around us.

Watching the kids learn to crawl and walk andfeed themselves was pure comedy.

Bandaging up my husband after his attempts athome improvement projects wasn’t funny, but his excuses for whythings went wrong certainly were.

And we would hoot for days over theexpression on our pizza delivery guy’s face when thick smoke frommy latest culinary disaster would greet him at the door.

I often think of sunlight as laughter. Itstreams in through the windows, tickling me, following me from roomto room as the day grows. But I can’t hold sunshine in my hands,can I? I can’t bottle it up for when the rain comes.

How I wish I could.

In every soul—mine, my husband’s—there existsthose deepest, darkest, most stubborn days when a light simply willnot shine.

We have seasonal strategies for those bleakdays, my husband and I. On quiet summer nights, for example, we’llsneak out into the backyard after the kids are asleep and wedgeourselves into a single lawn chair. In between kisses, we’ll try tooutdo one another with tall tales of child rearing.

Blame it on the giddy combination ofmoonlight, and surviving another day of parenting, but once Ilaughed so hard I popped a button right off my blouse. It flungitself up in the air and twirled around before landing in thepocket of my husband’s shirt.

To this day, he keeps that button in a metaldish his Grandpa gave to him when he was a kid. That old tarnishedbowl sits on his bedside table. Every night, he takes off his watchand his wedding ring and puts them inside for safe keeping.

My husband tells me that when he reaches intoit in the mornings, his fingers always seem to find the buttonfirst, beginning his day with thoughts of me, and of moonlight andlaughter and kisses.

He thinks there is magic in his Grandpa’sdish.

I think there is magic in us.

Love notwithstanding, sometimes the stress inour lives piles up in thick, iron-heavy heaps of trouble. Duringthose times when we aren’t able to find the patience to speakcivilly to one another, or to listen without criticism, we try tostay in separate corners until the heat of the moment burns itselfout.

We don’t argue often; it’s not our style.Sure, we engage in spirited debates—we’re parents, after all—but wedon’t argue. I won’t let us.

It is never the verbal contest of wills, theactual process of shouting arbitrary, needless threats at oneanother that I worry will jeopardize our love.

No, it’s the aftermath. It’s the time spentwondering if the words we hurled at each other with increasingspeed, and deadly aim, were enough to kill our relationship,permanently.

The silence, the separation, the hurt andanger poisoning the air makes those the worst, the hardest, themost terrible days in our marriage.

Somewhere along the way, we learned how toget through the argument, how to reach for the center, the middleground, and trust that the other will be there take hold of thepain and sooth it away.

To forgive.

For us, this middle ground is music. Thereare certain songs we’ve both fallen in love with over the years,special songs we reserve for those times when we—and ourmarriage—need them. Hearing those first notes begin to play answersthe question ripping its way through the soft flesh of my heart:“Is this the end?”

Suddenly, it no longer matters who startedthe fight, or who fueled it, or who will be the first to say “I’msorry.” Yes, sometimes it takes more than one song, more than oneday, to bend the anger enough to reach out and take a hold of eachother, to feel heartbeats and warm skin and the slide of a stubblycheek over a smooth one.

“Mom, why are you rubbing your cheek likethat? It’s weird.”

I stare down at my son, still on the kitchenfloor, and wiggle my eyebrows at him. He’s just barely still youngenough to find my face tricks amusing. Soon, I’ll have to learn awhole new set of ploys to distract him, and change theconversation.

I turn my attention back to the list