It can easily be argued that hubby and I have done things unconventionally.
We met in college, where we had several classes together. As English Lit. students, upper-level classes were small and intimate, often meeting around tables. Sitting next to him was a distraction—to this day I have the vague idea Dickinson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Emerson sat around inside some Cuban hotel’s restaurant out-wittifying each other (didn’t Dickinson say “Men surely shun the girl with a bun”?). Or maybe that was Maya Angelou and Oprah? My soaring blood pressure when he was around rendered that time in my life a blur.
Our romance was whirlwind. By the time we dated six months, we were engaged. By the time we were engaged six months, we were married. Newly graduated English majors aren’t famous for landing six-figure income careers. They aren’t famous for landing jobs that don’t involve selling lottery tickets or carrying trays of nachos to bad tippers. Luckily, we landed jobs that by the standard of our smallish city were decent and air-conditioned. Hubby worked at a local TV station, I worked coordinating home health care for the elderly and disabled. Every last penny counted.
We moved into a two bedroom apartment that seemed roomy at the time and within the first month of our marriage we found ourselves expecting our first child. We had no health insurance because we hadn’t been at our jobs long enough.
She was born. Nine months later I was surprised to see another positive pregnancy test despite our efforts to control rampant births. Nine months later, our daughter’s baby brother was born and we began to think to ourselves we will never get anywhere in this 100 stoplight high-desert town. Moving to the big city seemed impertitive because we were still struggling so much with our decent jobs but low wages. Hubby began to apply for jobs in Denver.
He found a job that was in our field of Englishishness, editing computer teaching manuals. It didn’t pay much better than his previous job, but it was our chance to get out of our current dead-end job situation. We made the move. Because we had no money saved, and his new job still didn’t pay enough to qualify for a mortgage, we decided to rent a house. I stayed behind while he went searching for a place to live.
The house he found seemed cavernous. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a garage, and a backyard to die for. Huge. It was a perfect place for us. We packed a UHaul and our one car and headed east to a new life. We looked at the rental house as a short stopover before we bought our first house.
It didn’t work out that way. After being in Denver for six months, hubby lost his job. It took two months to find a new job, which was a huge setback financially, but I remember those times fondly. We spent a lot of time together and grew closer through the strife of the day. I was pregnant with our third child. Our faith in God deepened during this time, too, and He brought us through. Hubby found a job that was far superior to his editing job in every way—better pay, benefits, and opportunity for advancement. Money continued to be tight and hubby missed working in TV, so he found a second job, working nights, at a TV station in Denver. Those days were also a blur. I stayed home with three little kids, who missed their daddy so much that one night at dinner our 3 year old asked “when is daddy coming over?” When I told hubby what she said, he quit his second job.
Two more kids came and four more years passed. We began to revisit the dream of buying our first house. But with five small children, it was hard to save money. As the kids grew, our once-“big” house was bursting at the seams. We had our daughter in one bedroom, three boys in another, and hubby and I had a the baby for a roomie. When I found out I was pregnant with our sixth child last December, that was the final kick in the pants we needed to start the process of moving. As we decorated our Christmas tree, hubby announced it would be our last Christmas in this house.
The process was long, stressful, full of distractions and derailings, two pregnancy losses, sorrow, and moments of sheer joy. We looked at 92 houses. But we did it, with God’s grace and the nearly chewed-through seats of our pants. We closed on our new home, our first, yesterday. After nearly nine years of marriage and five kids, our dream finally came true. I was numb after we left the closing office, until we got in the car.
I shouldn’t have worn my mascara. It was a good, torrential, soaking cry, the kind where you want to fall on your knees in thankfulness to God. The kind when you know a million pounds have been not only lifted from your shoulders but hurled into the deepest end of the ocean.
When you do things unconventionally, you find a certain kind of happiness that eludes the conventional, sadness and sorrow that further separate you from the pack, but delirious joy in the things others may find ordinary.
