Angie Kinghorn

The fine line between intimacy and nagging. Or, how to get your husband to do what you want.

Husbands, as it turns out, are not so good at doing what they’re told.

Hence the conversation in our house two nights ago.

Easing into bed, I cuddled up to Mark. “So, you’re going to call the doctor tomorrow, right?”

“Uh-huh.” He was engrossed in some sports message boards.

“Because I told you to call him yesterday, and you didn’t.”

He rolled over and closed the laptop. “I forgot.” He started to look alarmingly comfortable on his pillow.

“Hey! Don’t fall asleep! I’m talking to you!”

He cracked one eye. “No you’re not. You’re nagging me. Big difference.”

“This is not nagging. This is intimacy,” I said, snuggling close to him. I caressed his face and his hand. “You wouldn’t want a wife who didn’t care whether you lost the use of your dominant hand because you were too stubborn to go back to the doctor about this huge cyst, would you?”

“There’s a fine line between intimacy and nagging,” Mark said.

“Oh, no. This is intimacy. This is me caring about you. This is me wanting our world not to implode because of a stupid ganglion cyst. Because if you don’t do anything about it, then you’re going to end up slowly losing the use of your right hand, and maybe even your right hand itself after it gets horribly infected, and then I’ll start nagging you, and you’ll stop answering my phone calls and my emails, and we’ll stop communicating. Then we’ll end up fighting, and finally divorced, and your parents will come up here and your mother will kill you, your father will kill me, and then my mother will go batshit crazy and kill the pair of them, and then our kids will be orphans with no grandparents because their only surviving one is in prison, so they’ll have to go live with my sister, who will then be trying to take care of at least three dogs, one cat, two kids, and hold down a full time job.”

“I think you’re taking it a bit far,” Mark said, eyes shut.

“Oh, no. Because things will go badly when you lose that hand. You’ll end up with a stump. And how will you work with a stump? You couldn’t type!”

“I’d get a hook.”

“Ok, how would you wipe your ass?”

His eyes opened and looked at me like I was the stupidest person on the planet. “I’d use my left hand.”

“You are not taking this seriously enough. What if the infection spread, for instance, to your beautiful posterior-” I caressed the right half of said posterior for emphasis. “You could end up losing it and then I’d have nothing to goose and grab and it would be just like a rump roast in the meat section. You might as well slice it off now and wrap it in plastic!”

“I’m sure we’d get a good price for it.”

Did I mention how husbands are like mules?

“Well, did it occur to you that I would miss out on some things because of your missing dominant hand?”

“Like what?”

“Well … you wouldn’t be able to so skillfully caress that dry rub onto the meat, for one thing.”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

“That’s it. Where’s your phone?”

“On the dresser. Why?”

“I’m putting a reminder in your calendar.”

“It’s full.”

“It can’t be full.”

“It’s full.”

I opened iCal and saw that it was, in fact, impressively filled, but not full. “Look, you have nothing after 2:00 tomorrow.”

“Yes, I do. It’s just not on there.”

“Well, do you mind if I put a reminder in?”

“Go ahead.”

I’m not normally a caps lock kind of girl, but for the 9 a.m. reminder, I went there. “CALL THE DOCTOR,” I typed. And set an alarm.

Hell, he’ll probably just have gotten on one of the two calls or meetings he has scheduled then and ignore it. I should add another one.

Mark appeared to be asleep, so I added a 10 a.m. item plus alarm: CALL THE DOCTOR, dammit!!!!!

Well, he could still ignore that one. He’s got all this other crap on here. Maybe the trick is to go for one not on the hour exactly. 

11:15: Stumps are not handy. Call the Dr. or I WILL nag you.

I could see him getting to the end of the day and not having done it yet. Should add one more to be safe.

3:30: You should be off the phone now. Call Dr. Only you can prevent rump roast.

That ought to do it. 

Except. What if he ignores all of these tomorrow because of some major emergency? I should probably add just one more for the next day …

Friday, 9: 20: If you still haven’t called the Dr., I may have to resort to nagging.

The next day Mark went to work none the wiser as to what his calendar contained. And a miracle happened. I emailed him about something completely unrelated, and got a reply at 12:30 that he had a doctor’s appointment next week. That means it only took three calendar reminders. Take note, wives of the world!

I emailed back, “Yay! I won’t have to resort to nagging!”

Mark’s response: “Does that imply you have not already resorted to nagging?”

The poor man has no idea.

Afterbirth

image source

The song still makes me tremble.

I’ve tried playing it in small doses to get used to it, musical allergy shots, if you will, but the violin pulls my heartstrings out and flays them bloody every time.

It was playing on my iPod when my mind and body, already bruised and fragile, cracked wide open like an egg.

Do you remember
When we thought we were immortal
And the games we played always had a happy end
But in the game of life all the roses wither
And time writes its lines upon your face *Vertical Horizon’s Lines Upon Your Face, from the album There and Back Again, 1992.

No part of me was whole as I sat there rocking back and forth in the darkened nursery letting the music pull every dark thing out of the deepest recesses of my head.  The memory of the traumatic birth was fresh, and I was literally being held together by threads.  The experience of birth brought forth thoughts of its twin, death, and the music unleashed images of my father in pain, coming to the hospital to meet his grandbabies the day before he started a clinical trial he hoped would buy him a few more months.  I was paralyzed with fear that his inevitable death would be as painful as my grandfather’s.  The babies were sleeping, and over the music in my earbuds I could hear the whooshing of the hospital grade breast pump as it sucked milk and life and joy itself from my cracked nipples.

It’s three A.M. and he’s been feeling lonely
Work’s been hard and the city’s hard too
He picks up the phone and halfway across the country
A brother listens to his blues he says *

With each verse another of the tiny fissures I’d sensed in my head since late pregnancy burst.  Darkness, terror, panic, dread, and despair flooded from them, covering me.

I didn’t understand.  This was why I started taking Wellbutrin again three weeks before the babies were born.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  How could I fail motherhood as a novice when I had a safety net in place?

My body poured out more tears than milk, so many that my hands-free pump bra was soaked and I didn’t even bother to reach for a Kleenex.  I sat rocking in a stupor, letting the pump run long after my breasts were emptied.  The mental and physical pain melted together into something so red-hot, heavy, and sharp that it was all I could do to breathe.

Mark came in some time later and that’s how he found me.  In pieces.

He couldn’t put me back together.

I’m not sure you can ever put all the pieces back in the right place after postpartum depression.  Even if you eventually look whole from the outside, you’re forever changed by the damage.

Putting me back together took a psychiatrist using 450 mg of Wellbutrin XL and 300 mg of Zoloft, as well as Valium.  Then, when the panic attacks started, Xanex.  I went to one support group meeting for mothers of multiples with postpartum depression.  We talked about our meds.  Most of them were only on about 50 mg of Zoloft.  When I shared my medication regimen with them, they stared at me in mute horror, as if I would burst into a murderous or suicidal rage any minute.  I was the outcast in a group of broken women who all felt like outcasts.

I never went back again.

That meeting taught me that if any activity was causing me to crack further, it would only make things worse.  It was vital for my family and for me that I put myself back together.

What else did that take?  Weekly visits to my therapist and countless calls he was kind enough to take off duty, plus a husband who had known postpartum depression was a big risk but wanted to have children with me anyway.  A husband who knows I’m broken but loves me anyway.

Sometimes I wish
That we all were immortal
And the game of life always had a happy end
But I know it’s not true oh time keeps passing
But I’m just glad to spend my time
With you. *

*Vertical Horizon’s Lines Upon Your Face, from the album There and Back Again, 1992.

This was written for the online writers’ group Write on Edge.  The prompt: One person’s Humpty Dumpty is another person’s omelet. In 400 words or less, write about a time when something was irrecoverably broken and the ensuing scramble.  I’ve obviously exceeded the word limit, but sometimes your omelet turns out bigger than you planned.

Pantsless

This morning I came downstairs to discover Grant fully dressed, but Anne cavorting about in her pajamas.
“What’s up with the PJs?” I asked Mark.  “She’s not sick, is she?”
“No, but all her pants are in the dryer and they’re just not dry yet.”
Ok.
A look at the clock showed we still had an hour before we had to be out the door.  Plenty of time for a load of laundry to dry.  Right as I finished my breakfast, the dryer stopped.  I opened the door to find … a load of sopping wet clothes.
Right.
I started the dryer again, setting the timer for 60 minutes, and said a silent prayer that things would dry and Anne would not be sent to school pantsless.
Because that would be bad.  Bad in a setting-her-up-for-therapy-for-life kind of way.
Mark came back downstairs to leave for work, and naturally, asked why Anne still wasn’t dressed.
“The clothes still aren’t dry.  Also, they smell kind of funny.  Go take a whiff.”
He opened the dryer door.  “These aren’t even remotely close to dry!  They’d been in there for 55 minutes already!”
“What?  I figured you’d just started them.” 
“No.”  He fiddled with the buttons and turned the heat up to high.  “We need to get somebody out here to service this thing.”
“Agreed.  In the meantime….” I gestured at Anne.
He shrugged.  “Maybe she can wear tights?  I don’t know, I’ve got to get to work.”
Tights?  As pants?  Perhaps he meant leggings?
So Mark, fully pantsed, disappeared, leaving me to deal with this potentially life-altering ordeal.
“Come on, Anne, let’s go find you something to wear,” I called, and went upstairs to rummage through her dresser.
She was hot on my heels, and the minute I opened the drawer I knew we were in trouble.
She went right for it.  THE outfit.  The one we try to let her wear only around the house.  It’s not that it’s not cute.  It’s different.  It’s very Lily Pulitzer (only much brighter).  And, unfortunately, with a giant multi-colored unicorn gracing the top.
The leggings are hot pink with chartreuse polka dots.  The top is chartreuse with short puffed sleeves, then long hot pink sleeves coming down from there to give it a layered look.  And, let us not forget, the pièce de résistance, the unicorn.  Anne loves it, because it’s soft and furry.  In fact, while wearing this outfit, she’s prone to invite people to pet her chest.
Again, not good.
I tried to talk her out of it.  I had a perfectly cute pink sweater and a bevy of leggings to match, but she was having none of it.  She wanted her unicorn, dammit.  This is the point where I began to really regret giving up coffee for the first time, because it would have been the easiest thing in the world to just tip the mug right onto the outfit…or perhaps not, because before I knew what was happening, she had her PJs off and the unicorn on.
Did I mention this outfit is bright?  Brighter than your average Lily Pulitzer?  Not good for those of us with migraines.
I was shielding my eyes when Anne put her hands on her hips and said, in her best I-am-going-to-be-hell-as-a-teenager voice, “Mommy, when I first wore this outfit Daddy said something really mean.”
“Oh, really?  What did he say?  Do you want to put a nice sweater over that?”
“I don’t want a sweater.  He said something that really hurt my feelings.”
“What was that?”
“He said, he said … that it looked like the Easter Bunny pooped on me.”
I tried to laugh silently, y’all, I really did, but I was shaking and crying.  Fortunately, Anne was so introspective I don’t think she noticed.
“Honey, you just have to learn you can’t always listen to everything Daddy says.”
She sighed.  “I know.  He’s such a boy.”
After I dropped the kids off at school, I immediately called Mark.
“I took Anne upstairs with me to pick out her outfit, and she was right there when I opened the drawer,” I said.  “Two guesses what she’s wearing.”
“Oh, NO!!!”
“Yep.  She saw it, and there was no stopping it.”
“I bet her teachers have headaches.”
“Well, the strange part is what she said when she put it on.  She said the first time she wore it you told her …” I started laughing… “that it looked like the Easter Bunny pooped on her!”
Mark howled.  “No, no, no!” he said, when he could finally breathe.  “I am quite confident that what I said was that it looked like the Easter Bunny threw up on her.”
“Oh, that’s much better!”
We both laughed until I was almost in tears again.  Then I had a thought.
“Maybe someone will make fun of it and she won’t wear it anymore,” I said.
“We can hope.  Obviously it doesn’t work if we do it.”
We’ll be awaiting our Parents of the Year Awards in the mail, people.

As we really are

In the middle of my grandmother’s 100th birthday party, somewhere after the bread pudding but before the champagne toast, the photographer came to our end of the table.  

We have endless photos for our children of the two of us, smiling into the camera.  The laptop is packed with family shots where someone is tired, cranky, not smiling, or sticking a tongue out for posterity.  Even if everyone is smiling, it tends to look like we’re candidates for a police lineup. 

I wanted to capture a image of just the two of us; a slice of the evening that will one day let our children see that the relationship between their mother and father is richer and deeper than they imagined when they saw us only as purveyors of food, toys, and hugs.  

I told Mark what I had in mind, and he thought it was sappy.  “Why would you want to snuggle my face in a picture?” he asked.

“Just trust me,” I said, leaning into him, letting my face settle next to his, loving the familiarity of our planes and curves fitting together.  I wanted this photo so our kids could see us one day as we are together, as we are when no one is watching.

He sighed, leaned into me, and we both exhaled and relaxed into each other.

The shutter must have clicked, but I don’t remember hearing it.
  

**This is a memoir piece for Write on Edge, an online writers’ workshop.  The prompt: This week, I’m asking you to take us into the moment your favorite photograph of yourself was taken, to show us who you were then and what the photograph means–in 300 words.