I wake up way before my seven a.m. alarm. I’m beyond excited, but before I jump out of bed I force myself to do my morning bed stretches and affirmations. This is something Garth made me start while I was injured. Here goes.
“My mind and body are in perfect balance. I am unlimited.”
Nice, right? Loving myself isn’t really up my alley, but I find this very empowering. It’s better than the mantra I used to have, which was “Get your fat ass out of bed.”
I know today is just a store-sponsored mini mud run, but to me it’s the Olympic Decathlon and the Super Bowl rolled into one and placed in a large bag of chips. My nerves are crack-a-lacking. I’m going back to the scene of my crushing defeat—my complete and utter breakdown in the face of physical challenge. That was a bad bad day. The only thing that could have made it worse would have been shitting myself while trying to get over the wall.
But today, that wall is mine. “My mind and body are in perfect balance. I am unlimited.”
I hoist my fat ass out of bed and drag it to the shower. Max is still sleeping. I can only assume Ron is already at the store supervising the setup. I don’t have to be there until nine.
God, I wish I had slept longer; I was up so late. I lean against the shower wall for support. As luck would have it, Ron and I chose last night to finally hash out Textgate. Things had certainly been lightening up between us, but we hadn’t had a real discussion about it. After I put Max to bed, I joined Ron in our bedroom and caught him reading something on my phone.
“Is that my phone?” I tried not to sound too indignant, because we’ve always had an open-phone policy in our marriage. But seeing him scrolling without even asking kind of set me on edge.
“Yeah, it is,” he answered without any guilt in his voice. “I was rereading those texts you had with Don.”
Okay, so we’re doing this. I girded my loins and jumped in.
“See anything you missed the first time around?” I asked.
“Yeah, a lot. You guys were really chatting it up.”
“Just about stupid stuff.” I walked over and sat on the bed beside him.
“I can see that.” He continued to look at my phone and not me.
I touched his arm. “Ron, I’m sorry. I really am.”
“I still don’t understand why you felt the need to have such a back-and-forth with this guy. Am I not interesting enough?”
I sighed. How could I say, “It’s not you, it’s me,” without sounding trite?
“Sweetie, this is all on me. You are more than enough of everything I could possibly want in life. But according to my mother, I’m having a bit of a midlife crisis.”
Finally Ron looked at me.
“What’s the crisis?”
“Uh, I’m forty-eight, my best years are behind me, and I’m going to be a grandmother.”
Alarmed, he sat up. “What? Who’s pregnant?”
“Well, no one yet, but it’s coming just like everything else.”
“Jesus, Jen, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry. It’s just what I think about.”
“What else do you think about?” He seemed leery of my answer.
I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. Cripes, what don’t I think about?
“I think about how I look just a little less attractive every day. I think that when I’m sixty, Max will just be finishing high school. I wonder if I should have had a career instead of a bunch of jobs. I wonder why you love me and when you might stop. I worry that I’m not a good enough wife, daughter, mother, and friend. And I worry that if this is it, this is my whole life, will it be enough?”
There was a long pause, and then my husband said, “That’s it?”
It took me a moment to realize he was joking. I started to belly-laugh. He lay down beside me.
“So this is why you started flirting with an old boyfriend?”
“He was never my boyfriend. But…” I was trying to nail down what had been driving me this whole time.
“But … it made you feel young?”
Ding ding ding! Ron for the win.
“I guess in a way it did. I mean, he knew me before college, before kids … before you.”
“Well, he knew the young you, but not the best you, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know if I would have liked seventeen-year-old Jen as much as forty-seven-year-old Jen.”
“Forty-eight,” I corrected him.
“Right, forty-eight. I’m sorry you’re having a midlife crisis about getting old, but you need to see yourself through our eyes.”
“Our eyes?”
“Mine and Max’s. We love you and think you’re amazing. That ski trip was no fun without you, and not just because no one made skillet tacos or us.”
I started to say something, but Ron cut me off.
“Let me finish. You are everything to us … to me. But if we aren’t enough for you, then that scares me.”
I sat up on the bed. “You are! You are! I love my life with you guys and with the girls. It’s just hard getting older. I’m not the prettiest girl at the party anymore, and I need to adjust to that.”
Ron sat up beside me and pulled me into his arms.
“You will always be the prettiest girl at my party. Don’t ever doubt it.”
Corny, right? But it was music to my ears, and the makeup sex really burst the dam of tension between us. I’m so glad we had it out. I just wish it hadn’t been the night before the mini mud run, because now I’m physically and mentally wiped.
Out of the shower I grab my cell phone and check the weather. Sunny, with a high of 67 degrees: perfect.
I put on a pair of Lululemon cropped yoga pants, my favorite workout bra, and one of the Fitting Room T-shirts Ron had made for the event. I run a brush through my hair and decide a ponytail will be my best bet.
I’m humming the Rocky theme as I run down to the kitchen and whip up some scrambled egg on Ezekiel bread with ketchup—my breakfast of champions.
It’s 7:30 and I’m ready to go. Shit. I need a distraction, so I go into Max’s bedroom and rumble around until he wakes up from the noise.
“Hi, Mommy,” he says through a yawn.
“Hey, buddy.” I curl up in his race-car bed with him and snuggle.
“Is your run today?” he asks.
“Yup.”
“Are you going to win?”
“I will win just by finishing the course.”
He grabs my face so I’m looking right at him.
“Mommy. Winning is winning.” He sounds like Ron.
“No, sweetie, winning is doing your best.” I pull him into a hug.
“Want to hear my song about winning?”
“Sure.” I stifle a yawn. “Lay it on me.”
“Winning, winning, winning, winning, winning,” he sings softly, to the tune of absolutely nothing recognizable. I shut my eyes and sigh with happiness.
“Mommy!”
I open my eyes and something has changed. The light in the room is different, and Max smells like cheese.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” He goes over to his iPad Mini and opens it. “It’s eight-five-five.”
“What the fu … dge.” I scramble off the bed. “Did I fall asleep?”
“Yeah, when I was singing. So I went down and made my own breakfast without using the oven or the microwave.” He sounds so proud of himself.
Boy, nothing good ever comes from me dozing off. I start pulling clothes out of the dresser and throwing them on his bed. “Sweetie, we have to get going. Can you get yourself dressed?”