Making New Memories

Did you ever just...kinda...miss your spouse?  I mean, sure we live in the same house. We raise the same incredible kids.  We sit next to one another in church. I cut his hair and nag him about trimming his goatee.  He rightly looks away from me when I put color on my hair and walk around the house, looking a complete mess. We know what each other drives.  Hey, that's important.  One should never drive past their spouse and not recognize them.  But something gets lost in the long work weeks.  The events.  The conflicting schedules.

I miss him.

And I just found out tonight, after we resolved to spend a solid hour in the company of one another...that he misses me, too.

We realized that it's been about 13yrs since we had a nice, overnight date with one another.  I specify 'nice', because I had been mistaken in believing that we had other nice, overnight dates in between.  I was reminded (thanks, honey) that they were not. At all:

There was that time we went out to the Cleveland Clinic for my 2nd opinion.  After approximately 2 seconds of neuro exam and MRI review, the verdict was - I seriously did have MS.  What a beautiful setting it was, looking out over Lake Erie, his arms wrapped around me.  And me, inviting him to throw me in the lake and walk away.  If that isn't romance, I don't know what is.

And the time, many years ago, that we went to the mountains.  It was all fun and games 'til I discovered that ms and hot tubs don't mix.  Nothing says 'I love you' like hoisting your wife up and out of a swirling steam bath, because she lost her legs.  I could write a book entitled, "Things My Neurologist Told Me...Later".

Or how about our exotic time spent at a University, where I underwent a study reminiscent of a Bionic Woman tryout.  I was so frustrated with that stupid game where you have to put the pegs into the wooden block as fast as you can that I nearly threw it against the wall.  But I'm a lady and I keep it classy.  Especially when I'm 'on a date' with my husband, who was anxiously watching me from afar. To this day, I will not play the peg game at Cracker Barrel.  Not unless I can throw it in the fireplace when more pegs end up on the table than in their respective holes.  My husband will not allow that.

What. Ever.

That said, we've decided that we need to make some new memories.  Ones that don't include diagnoses, or loss of function, or even a series of neurological exercises...exciting as those may be.  This is a Christ-centered marriage, not ms-centered.  MS is not who we are.

This is who we are:

Parents who embarrass their teenaged children by taking 'self-shots', complete with strange faces and gestures.  Yes.  This is who we are.

(Note to self:  Leave above pictured MS Challenge Walk windbreaker at home while away with husband, or new memories will look a little like old ones.)