The Man Who Carried Us While I Couldn't
I think there are some versions of love that are very easy to write about.
First dates.
Wedding days.
Anniversaries.
Flowers arriving unexpectedly.
The big things.
The things we photograph.
The things that look like love from the outside.
And then there is the kind of love that helps you put your compression stockings on because you've just had surgery and can't comfortably reach your own feet.
Nobody puts that in a romance novel.
Maybe we should.
Because over the last few weeks, I have watched James love me in approximately the least glamorous circumstances imaginable.
I have been sore, bloated, bleeding, exhausted, emotional and occasionally completely irrational because I've convinced myself I can do something, done it, and then been annoyed when my recently operated-on body has had the audacity to hurt afterwards.
And James has just been there.
Not dramatically.
That's the thing.
There hasn't been one enormous gesture I can point to and say, There. That's what love looks like.
It's been hundreds of tiny ones.
Getting up because Arthur needs something and I can't lift him.
Taking over when Isla needs more from me than my body has left.
Making food.
Tidying things I haven't even noticed need tidying.
Bringing me tablets.
Checking whether I've eaten.
Making sure I sit down when I am very clearly pretending I don't need to.
Doing birthdays.
Doing summer.
Doing all the ordinary pieces of our life that don't stop just because somebody in the house has had surgery.
And doing it without making me feel guilty for not being able to.
I think that's the part that has mattered most.
Because I am very capable of producing the guilt all by myself.
I don't need assistance there.
I can be lying in bed, physically unable to do something, and still hear the children downstairs and think:
I should be helping.
James can be completely fine.
The children can be completely fine.
Nobody has asked me to move.
And still something in me says,
Get up.
Motherhood has apparently trained my ears to identify every noise occurring anywhere within a three-mile radius.
A bang.
Mummy brain activated.
A cry.
What's happened?
Arthur shouting.
Does he need me?
Isla getting upset.
I should go.
And sometimes James has had to be the person who says, essentially,
I've got them.
And I've had to believe him.
Which sounds ridiculously simple when I write it down.
Of course he's got them.
He's their dad.
He isn't helping me parent our children. He's parenting our children.
But there is a difference between knowing that and allowing yourself to completely let go because somebody else has it.
I think I hadn't realised how difficult I find that.
Then surgery took the choice away.
There were things I physically couldn't do.
I couldn't pick the children up whenever they reached for me.
I couldn't immediately jump out of bed.
I couldn't carry Arthur around.
I couldn't bend and lift and rush around the house pretending my body didn't have limits.
So James became the arms when mine couldn't be.
And God, he has carried a lot.
Not just physically.
He carried the atmosphere of the house.
That's harder to explain.
Children don't stop being children because Mummy is recovering.
They still wake up.
They still need breakfast.
They still argue.
They still have enormous emotional reactions to things adults would consider completely insignificant.
They still want to go outside.
They still want snacks approximately seven minutes after refusing the previous snack.
They still need baths and clothes and teeth brushed and stories and cuddles and someone to find the thing that is apparently absolutely essential to their continued existence despite nobody having seen it for six months.
And ours had birthdays.
Of course they did.
Because apparently scheduling my laparoscopy alongside both children's birthdays was the level of difficulty August had selected for us.
Two days after surgery, Isla turned four.
Nine days after surgery, Arthur turned two.
And James made sure those days still felt like theirs.
That's something I don't think I'll ever forget.
I was there.
I got to watch them.
I got my careful cuddles and saw their faces and experienced their birthdays.
But behind all of that was James quietly making it possible.
And I don't think we talk enough about that kind of love.
The logistical love.
The I've already sorted it love.
The stay there, I'll get him love.
The have you taken your tablets? love.
The love that doesn't need applause because it isn't being performed for anybody.
It just gets on with it.
There is something quite vulnerable about your husband having to look after you.
Not in the nice I'll make you a cup of tea because you've had a hard day way.
Actually look after you.
When you don't feel particularly attractive.
When your stomach is swollen.
When you've got dressings stuck to you.
When you're shuffling around the house.
When you're talking about bleeding and bowel movements and whether your belly button looks normal.
Marriage really does remove mystery eventually.
There is nobody I would rather have absolutely no mystery left with.
Because James has never made my body feel inconvenient.
Even when, frankly, it has been incredibly inconvenient.
He hasn't made me feel like the house is falling apart because I'm not holding my usual pieces of it.
He hasn't made me feel like I owe him for stepping in.
He hasn't made recovery feel like something I'm doing to everybody else.
He's just loved me through it.
And I've been thinking a lot about why that affects me so deeply.
I think part of it is because being cared for still catches me sometimes.
Real care.
The kind without a hidden cost.
Without keeping score.
Without making you feel guilty for needing it.
Without reminding you later how difficult you were to love.
There are parts of me that still expect kindness to eventually produce an invoice.
James never sends one.
He just loves.
I met him when I was eighteen.
Sometimes I look at the life we've built since then and can't quite understand how much has fitted into those years.
We've grown up beside each other in so many ways.
We've built businesses.
We've got married.
We've become parents.
We've lost.
We've grieved.
We've laughed until we've cried.
We've had periods where life has been ridiculously exciting and periods where simply getting through the day together has been enough.
And now here we are.
Two children.
A house full of noise.
A recovering wife.
A husband doing approximately six hundred things at once.
And somehow, underneath all the chaos, I feel safe.
I don't mean safe in the dramatic sense.
I mean the quiet kind.
The kind where I know that if I can't, he will.
And if one day he can't, I will.
Neither of us has to be the strong one forever.
That's marriage, I think.
Not fifty-fifty every day.
Sometimes it's fifty-fifty.
Sometimes it's seventy-thirty.
Sometimes one person is lying in bed with three holes in her stomach while the other is trying to stop two small children from destroying the house.
The percentages fluctuate.
The team doesn't.
I've spent a lot of my life learning how to carry myself.
Then I became a mum and learned how much I could carry for other people too.
This summer has made me learn something else.
Sometimes I can put things down.
Because there is somebody beside me who will pick them up.
Not because I'm incapable.
Not because I'm weak.
Just because he loves me.
One day, I probably won't remember every tablet he brought me.
I won't remember every time he lifted Arthur because I couldn't.
I won't remember every meal or bedtime or load of washing.
The details of recovery will blur, as these things eventually do.
But I think I'll remember the feeling.
Looking around at our life continuing while my body temporarily couldn't keep up with it.
Our children safe.
Birthdays happening.
Summer still moving.
Me healing.
And James somewhere in the middle of all of it, carrying whatever I couldn't.
There are grand ways to say I love you.
And then there is:
I've got it.
This summer, I think that might have been my favourite.
Lia x
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