Februry 26, 2016. Fact check: It was way more than enough.
On February 26, 2016, we make a bonfire in the backyard in Elizabeth. By we, I mean Mike. The household division of labor puts bonfires in his bucket. We burn a Marine Corps flag and a US flag (old, worn out flags that we are retiring), singing the star-spangled banner and the Marine Corps Hymn in tribute. All of Mike’s children are there, and Finn. Our songs fade away and Mike gets down on one knee.
Somehow, I am surprised in the moment, not expecting it. I knew it was happening. We’d picked out the ring together and I got my nails done earlier that week in preparation, as women do. My answer is a foregone conclusion too. We already have a wedding date and a venue and have been saying we are engaged for months. But Mike is traditional and old school in things like this and a “proper” proposal is important to him. In his mind, there is a “right” way to do things like this.
I remember what his face looked like, and I can see it with his baseball cap on backwards. But I can’t actually remember what he said, beyond loving me and that he loved how I loved and cared for his children. I wish I could remember.
Afterward, I tell him it was perfect, and what Mike replies is this:
“It was enough.”
I think about that, this week, looking down at the same engagement ring at the gym, seeing my husband’s face looking up at me and asking me properly to be his wife. Remembering him telling me it was enough. Remembering that he taught me about being enough.
Mike was born enough. His parents have three children, all girls, and his mom is pregnant. I don’t know why everyone was sure he was another girl; I maybe need to ask Karen this part of the history. But what happens when he is born is an oft-repeated family story: My elated father in law shouts for joy in the halls of a Murray, Utah hospital:
She’s got balls! She’s got balls!
This story tells a lot about how the Smith family culture is very different from the Pulispher family culture, though both families are Mormon. No one in the Pulsipher family would either do this or tell a story about it. This is just an observation. Getting married and joining your life with someone else’s means becoming part of a new culture, and in my new culture there are stories like this one and also the one where Schultze the dog bites Tom’s penis. 1
Mike was enough, just being alive. And more than enough, deeply loved, just for being alive. Some of this is simply the gift of being the youngest child, the only boy. And of just having great parents. But I think by the time we met each other, both of us were well used to not being enough. Or, being too much, which is probably just as bad.
I’m fifty-four and paying the oldest daughter therapy bills now. I was enough as a child, once. But the oldest daughter experience is not the youngest son, only boy experience. Add religion and purity culture to that, add divorce and mid-life to that. Add very young, early-in-life parent and sibling loss to that, and…well, my insurance company and I are both proud to help my therapist pay her mortgage.
And also, I have a husband who makes me feel like enough. I know what enough feels like, now. I know what love, acceptance, desire, and adoration feel like. I know what deep, cell-level comfort feels like. Validation. Confirmation that I am not, in fact too much, or crazy, or selfish for wanting…anything at all. Can you imagine? I hope so.
A decade ago, yesterday, I found out I was getting divorced.
Nine years ago, today, I bought a car by myself for the first time in my life. One I still drive, that is mine and Mike’s.
Six years ago, today, the man I love, the one who taught me that I was enough, lay dying in a hospital in Parker. He had two days more to live.
I will tell you a secret, a secret that maybe shouldn’t be one. Everyone is enough, for someone. Not too little, and not too much. I am enough for a man who proposed properly, sang songs about my eyes, and came back from the dead for me so I could sing him goodbye for three days.
Maybe this will help you understand why he is the only man who is enough for me.
Still.
Hilarious, probably to everyone except Tom.