This morning Halley talked about Being Someone’s Wife.
As I have recently met some divorced women I have wondered why Cindy
and I got along better than these women who for some reason or another
didn’t. Halley talks about being a wife, I agree with the things
she says about wifedom. In our relationship Cindy was a smart,
intelligent, a scholar as well as beautiful, funny and loving
person. She spent many years studying to be a dietitian, and then
went on to study more and get a graduate degree in Health
Education. She also studied and learned and earned credentials
that allowed her to be a Diabetes Educator.
I have a 2 year AS degree from a Junior College that took me almost 4 years to finish going to school at night.
The part I find most interesting is that I ended up with salaries that
were two or three times more than the amounts Cindy was able to make in
the health care field. But she always worked hard to maintain her
credentials and move forward in her career. I think we both had
the feeling that there would come a day when all that hard work and
study would pay off for her.
In Cindy’s case much of this was done while she was fulfilling her role
as a mother to our daughters. And that role wasn’t just getting
the girls off to school and spending the rest of the day relaxing with
friends eating bonbons. She volunteered at the girls school,
worked many part time jobs in her field, all the while studying and
earning continuing education credits to maintain her credentials, and
on top of that she did all the usual chores of keeping a house running
smoothly. Grocery shopping, bill paying, house cleaning, laundry,
car pools, brownie troop leader, etc, etc. In other words she was
just like many moms in this world. She was a woman, mother,
health professional, and a wife.
So here I was the working Dad that for many years worked long hours
developing and installing computer systems. Fresh out of Jr.
College with an AS degree you feel like you should take what you can
get and make the best of it. I did that for several years working
long hours and traveling. When we were ready to have children,
both emotionally and economically, I was still working those long hours
and traveling. And then I got the call from Cindy in the middle
of the night. I was in a motel in Connecticut while on a business
trip. She had called to tell me that her water broke. It was a
month before her due date and I needed to get there as soon as
possible. I called the airline and got tickets for the first
flight out which wasn’t going to leave until the next morning. I
didn’t sleep that night. I remember pacing around that motel room
all night stopping every few minutes to watch some bizarre old movie
that was on TV. It was one of the longest nights of my
life. During the night Cindy started into labor and by morning I
was calling the nurses station at each stop to see how Cindy was
doing. Lindsey was footling breech
and they were preparing for a delivery by C-Section. The medical staff
said they would wait as long as they could to try and give me an
opportunity to get there in time. In the end I only missed
Lindsey’s birth by a few hours.
I changed jobs when Cindy became pregnant with our second daughter to
make sure that I wouldn’t have to experience my next daughter’s birth
over the phone to the nurses station. Cindy’s second pregnancy was even
more exciting than the first one with Chelsey trying to come way too
early at 27 weeks and Cindy spent much of that pregnancy bed ridden laying on her left side.
Chelsey ended up being born with a relatively normal delivery and proud
dad was in attendance in person rather than by phone.
What does all this have to do with relationships and why Cindy and I
had a relationship that was able to survive all those years? I’m
not sure, but I think it had more to do with Cindy than it did
me. She made me the Father that I am today, and she made my
daughters the amazing young women they are. The ones who got up
early this morning to make me breakfast in bed, and give me gifts that
are more valuable than any present that I could buy for them to give
me. 🙂