This is Our Future

Millie, 3 months old (1 year ago)

"How easily this unthinking family love was forgotten."  — Ian McEwan

We were able to take Millie to the park for a few minutes today. In between errands, we stopped at the big park in the middle of town, and found a parking spot in the long line of cars. It was a perfect fall day, full of sun, and yellow leaves covered most of the still-green grass.

There must be something about fall that agrees with Millie, too. She laughed as she held on to the chains on the bucket swing, and laughed more when she crawled through a tunnel with Sky's help and found me on the other side. And even though she had fun sliding down the short, red slide, I think she laughed the hardest when Sky slid down after her.

She sat in a pile of crunching leaves and waved her hand around, directing a silent symphony. We practiced her newest word-flower (pronounced "woowwww-er")- over and over until she had us all dissolved in giggles. We got home in time to let her take a good nap, and wash the cloth diapers we've started using. And as we finished out our simple day of buying milk at the grocery store, cleaning up the apartment, and watching Sky head out to work, I realized exactly what I was seeing.

When I first wrote about the concept of marriage in the future- what relationships would feel like decades down the road- lots of you responded. And to my surprise and comfort, most of you didn't have the clearest of pictures of your futures, either. Although there are several things that I hope improve over the next few years, I reminded myself that this is still the vague outline I had dreamt up not so long ago. 

There was a boy and a girl who fell in love at first sight, and they got married. They had the most perfect baby girl. And though it didn't all happen in the way I would have hoped, we're still married, and we still have that baby girl. And though things will change in the future and we can keep dreaming of better days, I realized that today- the leaves at the park, the grocery store, the sing-song "woowww-er" in the backseat- is all exactly what I had kept inside my heart. 

Tonight, I'm going to paint my nails that are red and chipped. I'm going to sit and have a slice of the banana nut bread I made. I'm going to check on Millie, and make sure that she still has a blanket over her curled up body. And I'm going to stay up late until Sky comes home- he'll tell me about something a customer did, and I will tell him that there is still a little banana bread left if he wants some. And he will.

And maybe it doesn't make as good of a story as Cinderella and her prince. But I had hoped for something more real than that anyway.