Beginning

 I've been toying with this blog off and on for the past decade.  And still I'm having a hard time finding the tone for it.  I wrote for years about my son's food allergies and eosinophilia, not terribly easy, or light material.  But for the most part I found I could strike just the right amount of light in with the heavy.

I can't find it here though.  It feels forced.  Like slogging through thigh-high mud that's so cold the pain is sharp.  You're moving forward but every step requires focus and determination.

My stories don't usually feel this way.  I love telling stories, there is little more fun that a charming tale that brings forth a good ol belly laugh.  Or maybe helps someone else feel not quite so alone.  But this story makes my stomach hurt.

I've come at it in a variety of ways.  Places to start.  And finally, finally, one settled into my heart, like a flower fluttering to the ground and settled.  Landed and felt peaceful.  It was the moment I decided that I was going to stay.

I met my husband about a month after the ink dried on my divorce from my embarrassingly short and brutal first marriage.  He had been through a similar experience and coupled with a host of reasons we were jumping rather fast right back into the deep end of relationships.  I didn't quite realize how fast until one morning I found myself sitting in a waiting room with his parents at a children's hospital.  

It wasn't an emergency.  I had planned to be there.  I had ridden with him to the hospital.  I didn't just happen upon the situation or anything.  I had chosen to be there.

But I was young, 26 and had no way to truly understand what I had agreed to by attending this procedure.  He was born with a severe congenital heart defect called transposition of the great arteries.  It's a gnarly one that up to a few years prior to his birth in the 70's, babies didn't survive.  He was one of the early one's that not only survived due to the innovations in surgery occurring but thrived.  He had no restrictions due to this condition.  He was active, fit, and up to that day, had needed no extra procedures.  He wasn't even taking medications for it.

To be safe, it was time to do a heart catheterization, to check under the hood and see if there was anything hiding in his heart.  So I walked him back to the admission room, teased him about wearing a gown with little animals on it(children's hospital), gave him an embarrassing kiss in front of his parents, and walked to the waiting room with them.

This was when the realization landed.  I had to make a choice, right then.  I started to feel a little panicked, so I excused myself and went to the only place someone can be somewhat alone in a hospital, the bathroom.  I know, I know, I could have found the chapel.  But I was 26, remember?  

I went into a stall and had a little chat.  "Okay, right now I can leave.  It will be brutal but at this point in the relationship, he will recover.  Or, I can stay.  But if I stay, this is it.  I cannot just change my mind and leave him.  Decision time."

I'm 26, freshly divorced, standing in a hospital bathroom, trying to make a decision that will change my life.  I've already proven without a doubt that I am wholly unqualified to make life choices.  Which is likely why I could find the strength to shrug my shoulders and jump.  I stepped out of that bathroom stall, washed my hands(I don't make great choices, but I'm not a monster), splashed cold water on my face, squared my shoulders and walked back into that waiting room.  

I was staying.

It was only a short while later that I received confirmation that I had made the right choice.  While coming out of anesthesia, his heart started racing and the nurses couldn't get him to calm down.  They asked him if would like them to get someone for him.  He asked for me.  I walked up next to his bed and took his hand.  

His heart calmed immediately.

This is where our story begins.  A hospital bathroom and finding our rhythm.  There is so much more to tell you and I hope that the words start coming easier as this tale continues.  It's been 20 years so far.  There's plenty of material.