I See You

5 years, 5 children, 5 places we called home

It’s everyone’s dream, isn’t it?

“Love at first sight.”

Even those of us romantics

who know that “ love at hindsight”

is more realistic,

and perhaps even more romantic-

even we long to have

love at first sight

every morning, waking up next to our beloved.

Wasn’t that part of what marriage promised?

To have and to hold

and to wake up next to

every day.

But that isn’t what we have had.

For richer?

So far it’s been poorer.

In sickness more than health.

It’s been a long five years

since we said those vows.

Vows meant to be the roots

of a strong, new, family tree-

a tree that began to grow

so soon after our wedding day,

and then stopped short

even more quickly.

Our first child gone before anyone knew she was there.

I can see us,

you holding me from behind

as I rocked with pain

on my mattress on the floor of the room

that nearly killed me too

less than a year later.

I don’t remember much more

from that dark year -

the year when our first daughter born alive

slipped into your hands,

the hands that clung desperately to a wife

withering away to almost nothing

with no answers from doctors or shrinks

only to finally realize

it was the room-

that first home, infested with deadly mold.

You saved me from it