Thank You, Mr. Button  

A few nights ago, DH & I planned an "in-house date". While I was at work, he went grocery shopping to pick up a few things for my favorite meal. Then he stopped by the liquor store for a bottle of wine. He finished his errands by going to Blockbuster to rent a movie. He chose "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

This is where the evening went wrong.

It's no secret that two spouses, each with a demanding job, and a relatively "new" baby in the house can take a toll on a marriage. It can lead to a startling disconnect. There is the collective "you" before baby-- spontanous picnics, evenings out, maybe dancing now and then, whether it be out on the town or in your own backyard. Then there is the "you" after baby-- long, sleepless nights spent worrying about the future, long hours at work and away from those most dear, days when you're together, but do nothing but talk about the child who is upstairs napping.

DH & I have suffered from this disconnect for a few months now (don't all new parents?) and lately, we've been actively trying to break through to the other side. We don't want to be those parents who lose their love affair romance when baby #1 surfaces. We want to keep our love alive, active, growing, changing, evolving, on a day to day basis. We both agree-- agreed, long before we even conceived G-- that a faithful, urgent, passionate marriage is tantamount to raising a healthy child. Both our parents showed us the power of strong marriages as we grew up, and we have always pledged to do the same for G.

So when I came home from work that day to see my favorite meal on the table, a glass of white wine in a crystal glass at my place setting, and a Brad Pitt movie in the DVD player, I was half-way to seduced.

Before DH even pressed the play button, we'd already finished off half a glass of wine. 45 minutes into this nearly three hour long saga, we'd gone through the entire bottle. After an hour, I urged DH to pour a bottle of our favorite beer (Newcastle, for the curious readers out there) into our wine glass-- classy I know. Now, you may be thinking, wine then beer? Remember the old college standard: "Wine before beer you're in the clear" (although how I felt the next morning makes that a little debatable).

I'm not sure if you've ever seen "Benjamin Button". DH & I had both wanted to see it when it was in theatres during the 2008 holiday season, but G was only three months old. Without family in town, and with our current nanny still unhired, we didn't really have a lot of childcare options to turn to. So, we found ourselves on a humid summer night watching the movie in the comfort of our own living room. It follows the story of Benjamin and Daisy, who met early in their respective lives, although Benjamin was born old and growing younger day by day. (Spoiler alert!!!) Ultimately, they met in the middle, and had a child together. That's when Benjamin made the unbelievable, incredible, selfless decision to leave Daisy and their child so that they might have a normal life. In the end, Benjamin found his way back to Daisy in his "twilight" years (although he had the body of a 4 year old, he had the mind of an 80-year-old Alzheimer's patient). She bathed him, fed him, took care of him, until one night she gently rocked this now infantile Benjamin to his final sleep.

I was sniffing, sobbing, all-out bawling. But that's normal. I am the girl who cried during "Mean Girls" (damn you, Lindsay Lohan!). But I was shocked to see DH with tears streaming down his face as well. I'm still not sure what it was about the movie that hit us both so hard-- the poignancy of lost love reunited? Us imagining ourselves in the actors' places? Perhaps envisioning the other rocking our own sweet G to sleep as an infant?

All I know is, the moment the closing credits began to roll, I was upstairs like a bolt of lightning that had been streaking through the summer sky all night long, heading straight for the nursery. I quickly swooped down into G's crib, and in a moment was cradling our now 10 1/2 month old daughter as she groggily rubbed the sleep away from her eyes. This is something I've never done. DH & I have never been supporters of co-sleeping (he's 6' 6" tall and these days a svelt 260 pounds-- co-sleeping in our world is just downright dangerous). But tonight, we both felt the tremendous need to cradle, rock, coo, kiss, cuddle our baby girl. She's grown up so fast. It seems like only hours ago that we were hovering over her ambient warmer in the NICU. Just minutes since we brought her home for the first time, took her states away to meet her extended family, had her baptized in the church we adore. Mere seconds since she popped her first tooth, started sleeping through the night, started crawling... even walking. Where has the time gone? Where has my fragile, vulnerable newborn disappeared to? I think this movie hit home. It made both of us realize that life truly is as short as the cliche. That your world can change in the blink of an eye. To live every moment as though it was your last, because you cannot recapture moments once they have passed.

For those of you who know me personally, you know that I am a methodical person. I plot every move long before I make it. So for me to spontaneously sweep my near-toddler out of her crib in the (almost) middle of the night is unusual for me. But I'm changing. I'm trying. I'm forcing myself at times to go with the flow, to feel the power of every single minute, to enjoy every single breath I take, knowing things will never be the same. It's a stretch for me. At times, I find myself laboring under the weight of this spontaneity, struggling to find a rock to grasp on to as this world of inevitable change quickly swirls about me, shaking my universe to the very core.

But on that night-- in that moment-- as DH & I enjoyed the sleepy, groggy, somewhat-confused kisses of our growing girl in our big bed at the most unusual hour, it felt right. It felt magical. It felt like we made a memory.

All thanks to Mr. Button.