I woke up this morning with a heavy heart.
A heavy heart for my wife.
We were hoping to be pregnant sometime this year, but you know how that goes...
At the beginning of the year, my dad died suddenly in January and the next few months was on the phone and criss-crossing to California to settle finances and trust paperwork.
I looked a my wife last night and wept silently in my heart: she has all the dignity and grace of a good soldier. She treks on despite what's going on inside. She moves about in the same manner without letting her own heart-ache getting the best of her.
Michele has hit 'near death' incidents being laid up in the hospital for a week losing enough hemoglobin to require three transfusions to spending Thanksgiving in the hospital a year ago - in our journey of desiring to be parents.
Yet through it all - I know she's still a woman. A woman was meant to have children - look a Celine Dion spending millions to conceive or an entire hospital industry and research devoted to helping women conceive. It's a 'ache' and joy that every woman yearns for. The second most beautiful picture about a woman is her holding a child, the first obviously her wedding day. That's the other side of a woman - the mother: a remarkable person of commitment, nurturing, love, grace, dignity and shelte; the wedding day highlights her physical beauty, but motherhood shows her inner beauty of her heart.
In the shadows, her dignity shines bright.
She has cried quietly but she has never allowed many situations to steal the joy or cast a gloom over others having what she does not have.
• I remember her buying baby shower gifts for someone and never came back griping or complaining. She shopped with a deliberate effort, not some half-baked 'get-in and-out' attitude.
• When asked if she has children as her school - she always politely explains no, without drawing pity or giving bitterness.
Sometimes I hold her in my arms when she cries afterwards privately...though she lives her life with that value it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.
• Celebrating the lives of others when a child is born, or a birthday occurrence with the same excitement of the mother. Michele's perspective and value for kids is the same as the mother itself: she will laugh, play and affirm just as much.
• Not compromising on her values: she pulled out toys from her parents to keep the kids she's a nanny to not be glued and entertain their brain to mush by television (the parents have it on 24/7 almost). All these toys are 'developmental' in value designed to increase imagination, social interaction and growth in a child's brain. It's not her kids, no one asked her, but she does it as if was her own children. Even I was like, "Why spend the extra effort?" She replied resolutely, "Because it matters."
That's why my heart aches: any child in my lovely wife's arms is privileged as much as she is.
As a husband, I think nothing softens, or casts a sensitive spot than my Michele. I am privileged to be her husband and to stand with her. She rarely complains, but she does hurt quietly. If she one day woke up swearing like a sailor and throwing my Mac Pro laptop across the room, I couldn't blame her, but she doesn't. It's a quiet resolute faith and dignity.
That's the remarkable nature of my wife and one day I hope the kids will hear about it.