Writing Practice

My friend Rebecca issued a writing challenge and a topic about a month ago with the deadline of April 2. True to the form of my college days, I wrote this essay late at night on the due date. I wanted to participate as a way to oil up my rusty writing skills and boy are they rusty. In college I could have produced something pretty polished in a couple of hours. I am posting this in rough draft form because I can hardly keep my eyes open any longer. I should be embarrassed but I really want to start writing again and I need a structured way to do it and some accountability. Thanks for providing that that for me Rebecca!

In short, the theme was "Is this what romance looks like?" She based it off several excellent essays written by women and published with Redbook. You can find them here.

Here is my beginnings of an essay:

“Daddy’s home,” I say to my three little ones and turn to watch my husband, Dillon, come through the door wearing his heavy work boots, non-descript jeans, bright-orange safety t-shirt, and an exhausted expression. He kisses me hello and says, “I don’t know how you can work like this.” He is, of course, referring to me standing at the stove cooking dinner in my 3x10’ kitchen while our two boys stand on the top rung of a step ladder at my elbow and the baby sits in her bouncer chair in front of the refrigerator. With the dishwasher door open and the dog waiting around for a morsel to drop to the floor, that leaves me with about 2 square feet to move around in. I feel a subtle fear creeping in my mind. We look so different from each other in this snap shot.

Inseparable since high school, we now have just a few minutes a day together. For nearly a decade, our lives were so intertwined that our identities blurred. Now the division of responsibilities makes it so we can hardly relate our day to day lives. Where once we would talk for hours sharing every minute detail of our lives, we now exchange a quick bullet list of notable events and important information because there just isn’t time for more. I wonder where our Hollywood worthy romance is in the middle of all of the practicality. I wasn’t prepared to recognize the true face of romance that happens after the credits roll on the big screen.

We both work daily building our life together, but through starkly different endeavors. I am home absorbed in nap schedules, feeding times, and laundry. Dillon is entrenched in construction schedules, budgets, and blue-prints. We once shared the easily visible framework of our lives but now it is the foundation we share, set deep and sure.

Dillon kisses all four of us in our sleep every morning at 4am before he leaves for work. He works twelve hour days, then comes home and vacuums We oogle at our kids together over dinner. He holds my hand during story time. He shows out little boys how to fold their arms for prayer at night. He brings me a burp cloth and situates it carefully on my shoulder as I rock the baby. We talk about politics over dishes: he washes, I dry. We are in the middle of the hard work of true love.