There’s snow on the trail and flurries in the air. Sun rays ride snowflakes like vessels to the ground and I am here to witness their descent. I step carefully over thin ice and there’s a crunch as the earth adjusts to my weight. Then she holds me. Cradles me. Supports me.
It doesn’t even feel cold, this Detroit winter. There are two babies in my belly, baking like clay in the kiln that is now my body. After ten years of Portland’s gray drizzle, a sunny snow day is a walk through heaven. I unzip my maternity coat, snug around my middle, and feel the crisp air on my neck. It’s a perfect moment and I must capture it for myself and the world.
I pull out my phone and check my reflection to see glistening green eyes and chestnut hair coiled in damp ringlets from the snow. Minus a little third-trimester sciatica, I am healthy. I am happy. I am glowing. I smile at the camera and spin like an enceinte angel in a shaken snow globe. Then a whistle interrupts my Instagram moment.
“Maverick,” you call. “Get over here buddy.”
Maverick is wild and strong-willed like the fox he resembles, but on quiet days when the park is deserted, we give him the freedom to run off leash. You pull out a patty of dog burger and he races towards us from the distance. In return for our trust and pockets full of treats, he is learning to give us his obedience.
“Good boy, Maverick,” we chime in unison as he chomps on his manufactured meat.
You tussle his fur with gloved hands and then play together like adolescent boys, crouching, darting, pushing, and sprinting as you kick the grounded snow up, up into the air. I watch you two and wonder which one is stronger willed — the Japanese hunting dog, barely six months old, or the Navy man turned engineer, retired from bachelorhood at thirty-four. It’s a toss-up for sure. You two are peas. Now, this is my pod.
Behind us, Pippi loiters like a pokey little puppy, sniffing into bushes and dirt holes. My canine sidekick has seen me through a failed engagement at twenty-nine and the never-dull dating life to follow. Over six years, Pippi and I have jet-setted, van-lifed and everything in between, but we’ve both slowed down since meeting you.
A few weeks before I drove my van down the dirt roads of Crestone and found a seat beside you at the bar, Pippi started coughing. Six states, eighteen months, and fifteen-thousand dollars later, the cough persists.
Tomorrow, I’ll shuffle my two-hundred pound body to the University of Michigan and place Pippi in the surgeon’s hands for one last-ditch effort to heal her. I walk with my brow furrowed as I imagine listening to her incessant hack while two babies cry for my breastmilk. Then you grab my hand and pull me into the moment.
Before us, a trackless, snowy trail stretches forward. Paper birch and bigtooth aspen stand naked and unabashed while red pine and hemlock stretch and shimmer, silver in the Sun. Ahead, the trail forks. There’s a scenic overlook to the left and two-mile loop to the right, but I’m instantly transported to the past as I remember your November proposal. I turn to you with an air of nostalgia.
“As soon as you suggested we take the scenic overlook, I knew.”
“Knew what?” you ask, reflexively.
“That you were going to ask me to marry you,” I coo. You smile and look to the side, like you’ve been caught in the act of something secretive.
“There wasn’t much opportunity for surprise,” you insist. “We’d already picked out the ring… and I was on a timeline.”
“True,” I agree, holding my belly in sweet reflection. Then I wink and take a jab. “Your favorite.”
“Says the drill sergeant,” you reply, with a look that says don’t go there.
These are feelings still felt about the year we spent remodeling your home together. Much more than a physical transformation, our DIY efforts inevitably altered our relationship as we learned that a home remodel is the quickest and surest way to expose disparities in a couple’s pace, approach, and work ethic; not to mention, communication. We made it out by the skin of our teeth.
Today, we skip the scenic overlook and take the old loop, tried and true. As the ground inclines, our stances widen and breaths grow short. The sun shifts behind the pines and we retreat to silence. This is your comfort zone. It’s still new to me, so I practice letting my thoughts pop up and disappear, like I learned in all those years of yoga practice. You and I are an effort of equilibrium, a meditation in balance. I reach for your hand and you turn to me.
“Love you, babe.”
https://vimeo.com/904147589?share=copy
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Tadeusz Lakota on Unsplash
