Baby After Marriage: This is Us Right Now

I love writing about marriage. I think it is going to be so cool to read these post out loud to Perry as we sit on our front porch, rocking in our homemade chairs that Perry built, sipping tea and reminiscing about the phase in our marriage that challenged us to grow the most together. 

I love all the bits of our marriage, from the intimate, most sacred conversations that we have to the real, raw and broken bits of excess turmoil, animosity and beautiful chaos. 

Lately, I've been watching This Is Us. I swear I cannot make it through an episode without bawling my eyes out. If you aren't watching it, I highly suggest you run to the TV as soon as you can and binge the crap out of it.

The latest quote that has been replaying in my mind comes to a scene where Sylvester Stallone is talking to Kate about time. He talks about how in some moments, the flashbacks of memories pour in so vividly it's as if-if you can almost reach out and touch it. He closes with, "There’s only memories that mean something and memories that don’t.” 

I am continually trying to reach out and touch the memories in my mind like the day we picked out Winter's name, the first time Perry said to me, "Terra, meet your daughter. We have a daughter" at her birth, to the moment that he asked me to marry him next to a water fountain in Oaxaca, Mexico where it all began. 

Now that we are trying to get pregnant with baby number two, we have had our ups and downs and long conversations in about our marriage, and it's future. Nothing is terribly wrong in our marriage right now, but some days can be stressful. We have had to make a conscious effort to let the idea of baby number two be something that we are excited about, not overwhelming. I don't want these memories of Winter and with Perry to be clouded by what we don't have yet because we have so much. 

I've noticed that because we are both so tired at the end of the day, we have been lazy about making time just to talk. Watching a show has become our thing again, and while we spend time next to each other on the couch, I don't feel like it's the quality time that my heart is longing for. The kind of moment that makes those memories that mean something. The other night, I decided to opt out of show time and head to the bedroom to read. Perry came in to use the bathroom, and he stood at the door for a second, and we just started talking. He must have stood there for 5 minutes before he came and sat next to me. I think both of us felt that in a few moments, we would wrap up our conversation and he would head back to the family room. But he didn't. In fact, he laid there next to me for over two hours while we talked. It was only a few a nights ago, and I can't recall exactly what we talked about, but it was one of the instances in our marriage that I know I will remember. 

I will remember the way the low light flickered when it caught a glimpse of the reflection in his eyes. I will remember the way the room felt so warm and so still between the breaths and our sentences. I will remember the way his foot felt lingering next to mine.  

When we are old and gray on our rocking chairs, I will be able to reach out and touch this memory like it happened yesterday. Because, for a first time in a long time since starting this journey for baby number two, we were connected---and that, my friends, are the memories that actually mean something in this life. The rest, well it's just fluff. It's simply the space between the things that matter to us most.

Photography by Brittany Renee