True Grit

There's a red, heart-shaped, Mylar balloon hovering above your high chair, a half-eaten box of Godiva chocolates on the kitchen table, and a few conversation hearts strewn on the phone table (amidst bills and packing tape and pencils with pirate erasers). Ergo: we are in the last throes of the Valentine's Day season, a week which has consisted of anxiety, anticipation and disappointment. So, you know, like pretty much like any other Valentine's Day week. This one just had a little more bitterness built into it.

Last Thursday your father drove to Waverly, Iowa in a rented Toyota Camry and spent 18 hours talking to professors and deans and students and human resource folk about ethics and scripture and classroom dynamics and health insurance options. Then he drove home.

We spent the weekend in a numbed state of waiting. On Saturday we drove to Southdale and Grandma supervised your mall-running frenzy while Daddy and I went to see True Grit. The movie featured a badass, loquacious, neatly-plaited teenager who (spoiler alert!) loses her arm after a rattlesnake bites her when she falls down a mine shaft. I think those are requirements for Westerns (guns? check. rattlesnake? check. bad teeth? check. mine shaft? check. wooden porch with creaky boards? check.). Meanwhile, you rode on the giant choo-choo, ate noodles at California pizza kitchen, and tried to touch the people receiving the 10 minute Chinese massage.

On Sunday Daddy sang Kumbaya in church (a cool version, not a let's-join-hands-around-the-campfire version) and then in the evening we went back to church for the Valentine's Day dinner. I am not really so good at awkward church conversation, but I imagined a small table where your father and I could share an intimate meal. Actually, I was drooling when I saw the words "childcare provided." The teenagers run the V-Day dinner as a way to raise money for mission trips and make-out sessions in tents in remote parts of Montana--and actually, they were kind of darling. The boys in white button down shirts and red ties and fresh teenage acne and the girls in dresses far too short and tight and formal for the occasion. The dinner featured quite good food--but at a table for eight, not two. And we were interrupted just as the food was arriving by a page from the nursery (because we are living in an age when you are given a pager at the nursery)--it was 6:30 and you were tired and cranky (it was your bedtime, after all) and so I brought you into the dining hall and you sat beside us in a high chair, eating mushy carrot rounds and the broken bits of animal crackers I found at the bottom of the diaper bag. Then you ran laps around the church hall (lots of knowing, patient church smiles), giggling maniacally.

I am having a difficult time getting to the point.

Monday, Valentine's Day, was not the best. I won't go into details. Let's just say that if you have all day to get your Valentine some flowers, do NOT wait until 5:15pm when you are on your way home WITH YOUR WIFE IN THE CAR. That is unsexy.

On Tuesday Daddy got the call. No job. Somewhere, a nice, smart woman who has spent a lot of time living in huts in Africa (according to the pictures on her web site) is celebrating. We are not.

You, however, have been a champ. Good sleeping, good eating. Lots of hugs, few tantrums. And the weather turned lovely too. 45 degrees on Tuesday. And when I took you out of the car, you arched your back and screamed "alk! alk!" which I finally realized meant "walk." Or, more specifically, "put me on the ground, dummy, I can see spring edging out the snow."