12 Years

T W E L V E years.

Of all the things people told me, during this time that seems to welcome personal shares, I have to say that one thing in particular rang quite true. A collegue friend expressed that watching her spouse become a parent alongside her literally gave off that euphoric drug that only comes when you first fall in love.

This share came early on in my pregnancy so it gave me time to observe and feel this truth at different moments along this path. Like the time when Matt reminded me during difficult moments of sickness or discomfort that "You forget. You are working super hard! It is hard work making a #BooBopSweeney as great as ours!" Or when we read passages through books that made us fully resonate with this experience we were having together. Hearing him daydream while at P. Terrys about getting milkshakes with his son one day. Then some moments since Cormac has arrived, too sacred to detail, where I saw him overcome with this great thing that had happened to us of all people.

It feels like we have lived many lives together. The naive life when we dated in the reassuring comforts that come from campus life, in a town somewhat disaffectionately called "Happy Valley." We talked hopefully of adventures that would take us to new places, in both mind and geography. Then we did explore and a great many carefully laid plans exploded. So we downsized our expectations and let the universe guide the way - just so long as we were alongside each other. We adventured. We read. We explored. We connected to each other and those around us.

And then, of all things, the conventional scenario - that once seemed inevitable and then impossible - played out for us. It was a baffling and really quite beautiful turn of events. I am finding that the depth of ways in which I loved this Matt can grow infinitely deeper still, yet miraculously leave a boggling amount of space for this soul that by all accounts seems to be better than the sum of our greatest pieces. And somehow loving this wee boy also makes me love Matt even more because looking at Cormac I see those great, endearing parts of Matt on the most heart alterating scale.