"What are you going to do for your anniversary?" Elias asked me this morning as I cradled my coffee cup with my left hand, the one that holds the ring Nick slid on my finger fifteen years ago today.
"Um, be parents, " I responded, knowing the reality of our lives right now precludes romantic date nights.
We lost our evening Respite staff and there's the endless house projects and Olive's baseball and Nick' fire hall meetings and a lack of money and all the various spokes of this wheel that just keeps on spinning until we find ourselves half-way through summer with the daylight growing shorter by the minute.
"We have Salmonfest," Nick said, when my Mom reminded me in a text that our anniversary fell this week and we realized we hadn't planned a thing.
Salmonfest: four nights away from our kids, camping with friends, dancing in the grass to countless bands. An alternative universe where our toughest decision involves which music to miss live in order to cook meals at our campsite up the hill where we can still hear the vocals, the rhythms, the drumbeats that make me groove in my seat..
Do I want a cider or a spiked seltzer? Wine or beer?
Ah Salmonfest...
There are times when I'm envious of the ease of parents with typical kids, where a fourteen-year-old could easily watch over an eight-year-old so the parents can plan a date. Or they could both be farmed off with friends, as I often was as a kid, thinking how lucky I was for another sleepover, not realizing that my parents felt fortunate too as they embarked on another an evening out.
It can be isolating parenting a child with disabilities, where social plans come with so many layers of preparation. Where its often easier to stay home. And home itself isn't always easy with a child who experience complex needs--especially camping full-time in a trailer as we slowly work towards building a home of our own.
And yet if I'm going to be isolated, at least its with a man I love more deeply each day. A man who continues to impress me with his character, his values, his humor, his kindness, and his willingness to work his ass off for his family, putting on his "dirty clothes" after the kids go to bed, after a full day in the office, to work on our construction project of a house.
He takes hands-on fatherhood to a whole other level in this off-road life of ours.
Really, I couldn't be luckier.
And then there is this.
A conversation in the car with Olive this morning that made any slight sense of self-pity about the endless work of parenthood, even on a fifteenth anniversary, dissipate.
NPR played as we drove along Resurrection Bay, the sun sparkling on the water, the start of a rare bluebird day in Seward, an anniversary gift impsosible to plan.
In response to a story on the radio, Olive asked: "Mom, Russia has a border too?"
"Yeah, all countries do. Borders mark where one country ends and another begins."
"So if we went to another country I would get seperated from you?"
And that's all it took for me to once again see my privilege. To see how damn lucky I am in so many ways.
So we spent the rest of the drive talking about what it means to be white citizens in the United States of America, and how this birthright comes with great responsibility for both reflection and action, and I'm sure a lot of what I said went right over my eight-year-old daughter's head, but I spoke as much for me as for Olive.
So yes, we will spend our fifteenth wedding anniversary as parents, as a family, with our regular Thursday routine--how fortunate could we be?
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