A Cup of Comfort for Couples

by Colleen Sell

  The next day, the woman returned with school supplies and asked about the hand-high outline of cinderblocks in the yard.

  “My dream is to build a real school,” explained the middle-aged, divorced mother of four.

  “Let me help,” her new friend said.

  When the couple married in Oregon and again in Sweden, they asked for school donations in lieu of gifts, and the cinderblocks grew higher with each visit. Fatuma named her new school Bibi Jann Day Care Center in honor of the woman (bibi being Kiswahili for grandmother). Eventually, the school grew through grade five and evolved to become Bibi Jann Children’s Care Trust. AIDS orphans and the grandmothers raising them would come together under GRANDMA-2-GRANDMA to create goods to sell, and STUDENT-2-STUDENT began to educate the children, with sponsors worldwide for both programs. The journalist became a philanthropist/ social worker/fundraiser.

  Together at last, the man and the woman would enjoy eight American grandchildren, four Swedish ones, and some two-hundred African children who know them as bibi and babu. Together, they would travel the world, plant gardens, create homes in both their countries, and work to remedy the cause and effects of a terrible disease. Together, they would grow into contented old age and ever-deepening love — a love spread over five decades, three continents, and two centuries. A love worth waiting for.

  — Jann Mitchell-Sandstrom

  The Anniversary Gift

  “I can’t get out of the car!” I yelled.

  “Oh, dude, I’m sorry.” Jeff walked around the back of the Explorer to the passenger side.

  The gash from my C-section ached as I maneuvered out of the open car door. I slid between our car and the one right next to us. Its tires sat on the yellow line.

  “It’s over the line!” I grumbled.

  “I know,” Jeff said. “Kel, I could move our car.”

  “Where?” I said. “The parking garage is full.”

  He shrugged as I inched my way out, taking his hand. Happy anniversary, I thought. Tears threat-ened, but I held them back. I had cried every day for the last thirty-two days; I did not want to cry today, our tenth anniversary.

  Ten years, married to the same person. A milestone. We had planned a trip to relive our honey- moon in Mexico, had made the reservations a year in advance, only to cancel them months before the trip.

  “It’s safe to say you won’t be going,” my obstetrician, Dr. Clark, said at my first appointment. “This pregnancy is high risk. There’s anywhere from a twelve to fifty percent chance something could go wrong.”

  I nodded, frowning. I both wanted and feared this pregnancy. My oldest son, Aaron, had been born two and a half months early due to a nasty case of toxemia. For a few days after his birth, it was unclear if either one of us would live.

  But we did, and Jeff and I wanted to have another child. We told ourselves that pregnancy is risky no matter what, that we could handle the challenge. The statistics were so broad, there was a good chance this pregnancy would be a smooth experience.

  I wasn’t sure I ever believed that.

  At seven months pregnant, I was admitted to the hospital, just as I had been with my first son. The difference this time was that my placenta had sprung a leak, which put only my second son’s life in danger instead of both of our lives.

  After twenty-four days trapped in a hospital bed, I gave birth to Noah, who weighed only 4 pounds but was otherwise healthy. However, at two months early, he needed to stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit until he was able to eat on his own.

  Jeff and I shuffled toward the elevator, through the skyway and a maze of hallways to another elevator, and finally to the NICU.

  Noah slept peacefully, swaddled in a pastel blanket, a hat perched on his tiny head. Around us, monitors attached to all the NICU babies beeped in different pitches, what we joked was the NICU orchestra.

  “Can you get the screens?” I asked Jeff.

  He nodded, looking around the unit.

  A nurse approached. “What are you looking for?”

  “Screens to practice breastfeeding,” Jeff said.

  “For Noah?”

  “Yeah.”

  The nurse looked uncomfortable. “He seemed hungry earlier, so he’s been fed. I’m sorry; we didn’t know you were coming today.”

  Jeff and I stood in silence. We journeyed to the NICU each day, making arrangements for our oldest son to stay somewhere while we drove the 15 miles to visit. We tried to time our visits to coincide with feedings, usually the only times Noah was awake.

  I sat in the rocking chair Jeff pulled up behind me. I laid my head back and looked up at the ceiling, using gravity to force my tears back. I did not want to cry today. Today, everything was going to be better.

  “We can still hold him, though?” I heard Jeff ask.

  “Oh, yeah, no problem,” the nurse said.

  Jeff picked up our tiny son, untangling the cords that measured Noah’s vital signs, and laid him in my arms. I put my nose in the crease of his neck and inhaled, nuzzling his cheek next to mine.

  Jeff sat across from us in another rocking chair a nurse had pulled up. Halfway through our hour-long visit, I offered him Noah and left to go pump in the NICU’s pumping room.

  Breastfeeding your baby while not actually having your baby with you is not an easy task. Every two to three hours I would dutifully hook up the breast pump, gather my measly cc’s of milk, and refrigerate them until visiting time. I usually needed to pump while at the hospital to cover our travel time.

  After my breasts had been tugged empty, I bottled up the breast milk to take to the NICU fridge. It needed to be labeled and placed in a tray with Noah’s name on it.

  I lined up the bottles on the counter above the refrigerator. There were six three-ounce bottles. None were more than half full. I opened the refrigerator and glanced inside to see several large bottles filled to the top with breast milk. I stared at my bottles. I had fought hard for that milk. I wanted full bottles. Six half-full bottles will make three full bottles, I said to myself, twisting the cap off the first two bottles. I turned, knocking the bottles over. My breast milk spread across the counter.

  Jeff had come up behind me, ready to go. He stared. First at the puddle, then at my face.

  “Just go ahead,” Jeff said. He placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll clean it up.”

  I nodded. I waited by the nearest elevator, every so often wiping my face on my sleeve.

  In silence, we journeyed down the elevator, through the halls, across the skyway, down the other elevator, and into the parking garage.

  “Just cry,” Jeff said in the darkness of the garage.

  “I don’t want to! It’s our anniversary, and I have makeup on, and I don’t sleep, and it’s a special day, and we don’t even get to do anything really special,” I blubbered, my face in my hands, standing beside our car’s passenger door.

  Jeff hugged me, and I let him, pushing the side of my face against his chest. I breathed in his scent, a mix between the soap and deodorant he’s used since I first met him when I was fourteen and he was sixteen. And underneath, that slight musky smell of our adolescence reminded me of our first high school dance, our make-out sessions, and the day we said good-bye when he went off to college. The scent reminded me of the afternoon we got mar- ried, when the rhododendrons outside the church bloomed in brilliant fuchsia and delicate violet and the sun warmed us as we drove away together.

  “Well,” he said.

  “Well, what?” I breathed in again.

  “Maybe it’s not about that.”

  “About what?” I took another breath.

  “Maybe an anniversary isn’t about makeup and romance and fancy food. Maybe it’s about remembering.”

  My tears had stopped. “Remembering what?”

  “Remembering why we got married in the first place. Remembering to just be here.”

  Stunned, calmed, I looked up at him.

  “So what do we do? For our anniversary?” I aske
d.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  As we drove out of the parking garage into the sunlight, I held his hand. Sometimes, that’s all you can do. It was the perfect anniversary gift.

  — Kelly Wilson

  Come Rain or Come Shine

  “How ya’ doin’ on this side?” asks my husband, Jean-Marc, as he walks by me with a bucket full of water for the hundredth time.

  “I think I just saw an Orca swim by,” I tease.

  “Tell him to grab a mop and help out.”

  Usually Tuesdays are fun. Usually on Tuesdays our kids are in school, my husband has the day off, and we indulge in date day. A normal Tuesday date day involves hiking, biking, playing gin rummy, or watching reruns of Match Game. But ask anyone in Rhode Island and they’ll tell you that Tuesday, March 30, 2010, was anything but normal.

  Rhode Islanders had just endured an extremely rainy summer followed by an equally rainy winter. So instead of a spring where snow melted slowly enough to be absorbed into the ground, our yards were saturated. Nine inches of rainfall the week before caused local lakes and rivers to fill to capacity, leaving the seven inches of rainfall to come with nowhere to go.

  “Did you know it’s raining outside?” Jean-Marc asks rhetorically as he returned to his post on the other side of the basement with his empty bucket.

  “Have I mentioned how un-fun this is?” I reply.

  “How un-fun is it?” he yells in his best Match Game studio-audience voice.

  “It’s so un-fun that I’d rather be in Cancun!”

  Even the sound of the wet vac being turned on doesn’t drown out the echo of his laughter.

  Fourteen and a half years prior — before marriage, kids, and mortgage — we had been a couple of carefree twenty-something-year-olds living in sin and vacationing in Cancun, Mexico. The trip had been our first “vacation for two” and only my second time outside the United States. For the first two days, Eduardo served us cervasas on the beach as we soaked up the sun and booked excursions to local sites.

  On day three, the clouds rolled in.

  On day four, after the bus dropped us off at an ecological park, the heavens opened up and we wasted seven hours crammed in a gift shop with a hundred other tourists all waiting for the buses to return.

  By day six, we had spent all our pesos on Doritos, chocolate chip cookies, and Coca Cola, hung the “No Molestar” sign on our hotel room door, and watched muchos episodes of Scooby Doo dubbed in Spanish.

  “I can’t stand the rain . . .” sings my husband, walking by with another bucket full of Rhode Island rainfall.

  I pick up my now-filled tub and follow him up the stairs. “Purple rain, purple rain . . .”

  Outside, the storm pelts us from all directions as we let the water gush down our driveway like a double Niagara Falls.

  “Raindrops keep falling on my head . . .”

  “Red rain is pouring down, pouring down all over me . . .”

  “Wait!” cheers Jean-Marc. “I think it’s stopped!”

  “You’re inside again,” I tell him.

  “I knew it seemed too good to be true.”

  I lead us back down the stairs, and upon reaching the last step I notice a new little trail of water. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Another leak?”

  My husband kisses my forehead. “By Saturday, it’ll be like this never happened.”

  “Are you insane? If this keeps up, I’ll drown by Thursday.”

  “Turn that frown upside-down, muchacha.”

  “How can you stay so cheery?”

  “We survived Cancun, we can survive this. Besides, the newest leak is on your side.”

  Before I can swat him with a nearby towel, he zips around the corner.

  “Viva Cancun,” my husband shouts as he turns on the wet vac again.

  As I use the mop to sop up water from the newest leak, my thoughts return to our last night in Cancun. The loud rain had subsided, the fierce winds had calmed, and for the first time in days, we believed we would finally get a good, albeit lumpy, night’s sleep. A couple hours later, however, we both awoke to the rhythmic sound of drip-drip-drip.

  Clicking on the light, we searched the room for the origin of the noise and found it beginning in the roof and landing directly into Jean-Marc’s sneaker. We marveled at Mother Nature’s aim and accuracy, then replaced Jean-Marc’s sneaker with the room’s wastebasket. We snuggled back into bed, clicked out the light, and allowed the drip to lull us back to dreamland.

  Drip. Drip. Drip. Splink.

  “What the — ?”

  Another scavenger hunt of the room revealed a second leak, so we utilized the ice bucket to collect those drops. By morning, we had enlisted the help of a second ice bucket, a plastic cup, and a soda bottle to prevent our room from becoming the hotel’s first indoor swimming pool. And despite the shining sun, our attention could not be distracted from the numerous overturned lounge chairs, knocked over signs, and uprooted trees.

  “Hola, senorita,” says Jean-Marc, jolting me back to our present-day flood. “I hope this little huracan will not keep you from visiting us again.”

  I laugh.

  Jean-Marc smiles too. “There’s the smile I love so much. After you, gringa.”

  As we lug our buckets up the stairs once more, my husband changes to a French accent. “Oooh la, la! Look at zee deriere, de Madame. Tres mignon.”

  Outside, he switches to English. “Iceberg, dead ahead!”

  Inside again, he taps me on the shoulder. “Excuse me, which way to the lido deck?”

  “Five fathoms down this way, sir.”

  We kiss and return to our respective basement posts. As the wet vac drowns out the sound of my husband singing “La Cucaracha” off key, I think of all the storms we’ve weathered since that trip to Cancun. Planning a wedding. Buying a house. Post-partum depression. A child with Asperger’s syndrome. The passing of Jean-Marc’s parents. And though I know these are probably just the tip of the iceberg of what is yet to come, I won’t sink into despair. Instead, I’ll pick up my mop, sop up some water, squeeze it into the bucket, and know that by this Saturday today’s adventure will be just another drop in the bucket. Because the love Jean-Marc and I share is a lifeboat that is strong enough to weather us through any storm together.

  — Judy L. Adourian

  The Taming of the Green-Eyed Monster

  Several months ago, my husband of thirty-three years told me, “You have until I’m sixty to stop worrying that I’m going to fall for another woman. No one will want me then.” He laughed.

  By that time, we will have been married thirty-eight years. John believes it’s time I finally trust that he is devoted to me and only me. I agree, but we’ll see.

  My insecurities probably started as a toddler. Mom tells a story of storming into a lounge, me on her hip, and challenging my father to get off the barstool next to the pretty brunette. “You’d better be home before we get there,” she said before storming back out. She’d known my dad would be meeting this woman for a week, and couldn’t wait to catch him at it. Dad did beat us home. But he went out and met other women again, and again, and again. My mother eventually moved him out, into a furnished singles apartment, while he “worked.” She hung his clothes in the closet, bought him linens, put sandwich makings into the refrigerator — even stocked the bar. She was still in love with him. And Dad, I remain convinced, was truly in love with her. He would have never moved out on his own. He swore till the day he died that he never “played nookie” with any other woman while he and Mom were together. Mom laughs, “He started fooling around on me while we were in high school. I even broke off our engagement because of it.”

  John has never done anything that even vaguely resembles the philandering behavior of my father. He doesn’t flirt; if he winks or whistles at a woman, it’s at me. He refers to me as his girl, calls me “my love,” serenades me with Eric Clapton’s “W
onderful Tonight.” John has never hung out in bars after work; he comes home to me as fast as he can. The only other girl he’s really been with is a girl named Cindy. He went with her in high school, not for long, and he broke it off. I pried that out of him. I probably shouldn’t have, because even after all these years, I think of her whenever I meet somebody named Cindy.

  But Cindy is not the only girl I’ve been jealous of over the years. Heck, girls; I even became jealous of John’s guitar. “You touch that guitar more than me,” I cried early on in our marriage. Then there were the secretaries. I imagined one had kissed him after I’d matched her kamikaze for kamikaze, me a stay-at-home mom and totally out of practice. John and I were attending his going-away party; he’d been transferred to another department at AiResearch. That was 1981; I may finally be convinced it didn’t happen. Another, John hired when he started his moving and storage business. I talked to her on the phone for months before I met her. When I finally saw her in person — oh, my gosh! — she was beautiful.

  “But, honey,” John explained, “when I hired her she was fat.”

  My insecurities continue to haunt us. I continue to question John and to size up the women he works with. I wonder if I would have worried less if John had worked at fewer jobs over the years and met fewer women. I doubt it.

  Our family, like many others, has been hit by the recession. John has been out of work for much of the past two years. We recently moved from Portland, Oregon, back to Bend, where we feel at home. But I am working, and John is lonely. His music and his guitar (which I now love almost as much as he does) are not enough to fill the empty spots. I have fiddled a bit on Facebook for a year or so, during which John has shown no interest. Whenever I’ve tried to coax him to join he’s always declined.

  “But baby — ”

  “No.”

  “But your old friends, who you still tell me stories about like it was yesterday — ”

  “No!”

  “Okay,” I’d finally give up.

  One evening I came home from work, and seeing the slump in his step I decided to pop onto my Facebook account. There, I saw the faces of extended family and friends, many of whom are in California, where we lived till we were in our thirties, and of our children, who are three hours away in Portland. I smiled that rascally smile I attribute to my mother.