Bobby

I'm not a mushy, romantic sort of girl. I'm just not. My sister-in-law can gush about the crush she had on her husband when they first met and continue to explain how her love has grown into a beautiful whatever - and I can't do that. My sister can speak so purely about the love she has for her husband - and how she misses him so when he works long hours. Again - not me. I used to wonder if the romantic part of me was broken or missing or just covered up by plans and to do lists. All I knew was that romantic talk made me feel strange and false and mostly just really embarrassed.


Anyway - Bobby has always accepted and loved me for who I am. Romantic and sweet - or not. Lately, though, I have not even been kind. Granted, I am 11 weeks pregnant and sicker than ever. I feel like I've just gotten off that centrifuge ride at 6 flags - all of the time. But it's no excuse. Cognitively I know that, but emotionally I just want to be mean to someone and I'm fairly certain after 15 years, he's going to stick around regardless.

It's not that he's doing anything "wrong," either. To the contrary, he's making dinners, taking Isabelle to the bus, and folding laundry. I would have been stunned by such behavior 6 years ago. But it's never enough for me. It's never the exact way I'd do it - plus It's not giving me my energy back and that's all I really want anyway.

So this past week, i've just sort of given up. I met with the doctor - heard my little baby's heartbeat and was told to just lay low for the next couple of weeks. "The nausea will pass," everyone including the doctor keep telling me. And one of my sisters (not the mushy one) has advised me to just keep my mouth shut until it does. Good advice, actually.

So I'm just sitting in my sick chair - the one in the living room that has my computer/phone/book/ice water/&snacks placed conveniently beside it so that I do not have move and thus jar the nausea into action. Anyway, so I'm sitting here - being still and quiet, when Bobby brings me a cd.

He has used his i-tunes gift card to make me a cd. A cd of all of my favorite girly folk songs that are hard to find on lala - and whose cd's and tapes we have lost several moves past. As he plays it - Dar Williams, Shawn Colvin (pre- sunny comes home), Nancy Griffith, and obscure Indigo Girls come tumbling out of the speakers reminding us both of hours spent in used music stores in Charlottesville, DC, Chicago and Austin. And of still more hours harmonizing with Amy and Emily while road tripping.

Bobby has moved way past such 90s girly folk music. The Deadweather, Yacht, and the Woods are more his scene. I'm sure there were a million songs he wanted to spend his gift card on. Yet he made this for me. To cheer me up. It made me teary - I love him so much.