Things Change

The Next Great Adventure: A True Story

Things Change

Though there was a waterbed store near Parker Rd and Alma Dr in Plano in the 1990s, there's a good chance that Cindy and I were the last married couple in Collin County to ditch their water bed in 1996. I bought one when I moved to Atlanta in 1982 because they were cheap. We got a slightly better model when we moved into our house in Missouri City. They were still cheap. But I remember the occasion when we finally got rid of it and bought a grown up bed. It was February, 1996, and we had just confirmed that Cindy was pregnant.

When we moved to Plano, closer to family, it was mutually understood that children would be on the agenda. Of course, with Cindy, everything had to be planned and, unfortunately, conception is rarely concerned about your planning. In 1995 we had one brief period where we thought Cindy was pregnant, at least according to the home pregnancy test, but before she got to Dr. Fuller to confirm, she had a miscarriage. That made us both very nervous and concerned. What if we couldn't have children? We had put it off so many years and I knew what it meant to her. It could have been devastating to us.

After that first miscarriage I was desperate to understand how and why it happened. One of the things that came up in my crazed search for answers was that electromagnetic fields could be an issue, power lines and such, and that made me suspicious of the electric water bed heater. Yes, it was probably me buying into someone's crazy theory, but the day her pregnancy was confirmed by the doctor we started sleeping in the guest bedroom, on a regular bed with mattress and box springs.

Fortunately we found a "real" bed for ourselves soon enough and the guest bed was available again, which was a good thing because later that summer our niece Cassie would begin spending a lot of time in that guest room and, eventually, doing a lot of babysitting. In the following months we pored through 'What to Expect When You're Expecting,' took birthing classes at Baylor Hospital in downtown Dallas, spent countless hours discussing baby names in earnest, and, with Cindy's usual project management mentality, decorated a nursery, outlined a birth plan, and detailed my instructions up to and including delivery day.

It was marvelous.

In all the years we were together I do not recall Cindy being happier. Yes, she had some morning sickness. And yes, being pregnant in the summer in Dallas was not easy duty, but none of that mattered. She would come home from work, strip down to her skivvies, lay under the ceiling fan on our grown up non-waterbed and say "this kid will be prepped and ready for Texas summers." She's pregnant in her graduation photos from Dallas Baptist University. Her cravings were chocolate milk and tacos, and for the only time in her entire adult life she abstained from coffee because even smelling it made her nauseous. The pregnancy and her constant laughing about the silliest things caused a leaking bladder problem. She joked about having "baby brain" but the lists and notes in her ever-present steno pad kept things moving along smoothly.

To the outside world, to her co-workers and friends and family, she was managing pregnancy like every other thing she managed. To me, she expressed concerns. Would she be a good mother? Would we be able to provide? What if she didn't want to go back to work? Would everything work out? Would we, Cindy and I, be able to grow beyond husband and wife to father and mother and what would that look like? I had all those concerns and more, but knew my role was to reassure, not add to her worries, and besides, she was obviously happy and that's all I ever really wanted.

It was about this time that I realized "I'm not ready to have kids" was me being selfish. It wasn't, or shouldn't have been, about what I wanted, what met my needs. We should have had children earlier. I should have considered what would be best for both of us. We could have had more children, but we didn't. Cindy, for her part, never looked backed with regret. She only looked forward with hope, always believing in the meant-to-be.

Griffin was born in late September. A few days before we had each made a separate, secret list of first names that we liked. The middle name was already decided. That morning, in the hospital, we compared lists and found that Griffin was the only name on both of our lists so the choice was easy. In typical Cindy fashion she had multiple tasks and lists prepared for me and I dutifully checked off the to-dos as we waited to go to the delivery room. At one point she almost forgot about being in labor. The local TV station was reporting that students had been pepper sprayed at Rowlett High School, during some sort of school assembly/riot, and she was adamant that we find out if Cassey (another niece), who went to school at RHS, was okay.

Someone once told me that a group of mothers sitting around telling labor and delivery stories was like listening to Vietnam vets talking about patrols outside the wire, each story more harrowing than the last. I won't attempt that level of detail here, but from my perspective it went pretty smoothly and was relatively uneventful as medical procedures go. I think Cindy and the all female crew of doctors and nurses were a bit disappointed that I didn't faint or get nauseous, but there was nothing unexpected or unsettling and I didn't really understand why they were concerned, though I suspect there was some sort of wagering going on.

Frances stayed with Cindy and Griffin that night in the hospital and I went home to take care of the dogs and get some sleep. It was fairly late when I drove home. I had stayed in the hospital room, holding Griffin, to watch the Texas Rangers clinch the AL West title. I remember driving home, north on US 75 Central Expressway, with the roof open on Cindy's ES300, just singing along to pop songs. It was a remarkable, happy feeling - wondering what the future would hold and knowing that we would be raising a child, the epitome of hope and potential. I knew it was a big responsibility, and I knew we could do it. Unjustified confidence I suppose.

It wasn't all emotion and contemplative reflection ... I was still going through Cindy's checklist ... Did you call Eddie? Don't forget to put the car seat in. Here, take home this blanket from the baby for Pearl and Cosmo to smell. Be back early in the morning to relieve Mom!

Despite excellent planning there were still many adjustments to make and a few bumps in the bringing baby home process. We dealt with jaundice and breast feeding struggles and a long line of visitors, and of course juggled those with work and recovery and wedging Griffin into every facet of a developing new routine. He cooperated for the most part and was, as they say, an "easy" baby. We figured it all out soon enough, I think primarily because we were not exactly "young marrieds" trying to figure out marriage and babies at the same time. We were much more calm than panicked.

Cindy returned to work shortly before Christmas, and she was ready to go back. We found a good day care and made the adjustment to our routine. Christmas itself brought an explosion of toys and gifts and visitors but we got back to our new normal not long after. While Cindy was home with Griffin all day she was happy when I came home to take him off her hands for a few hours. After going back to work, she was equally anxious to spend all of her home time with him so it worked out about how I expected. The baby got the attention and I was bumped down a notch or two on the priority list. I'm not complaining; it's just an observation. I knew it would happen and I think that's how it should be.

Cindy took on the additional responsibilities of motherhood without missing a beat. She simply re-prioritized and worked it in to everything else she was already doing. I thought I was doing well, too, but in the spring I started to be concerned about how I was managing things. Something just didn't seem right. I tried to talk to Cindy, to explain what was going on, but she just couldn't see it. She was frustrated with me at times, but other than that couldn't see why I was feeling "off."

I had changed jobs in July of 1996, just before Griffin was born. It wasn't just a job change, it was a career change. I moved from office/clerical management to computer consulting with a company named Paranet. I bounced around from project to project doing basic Unix administration and system/software support. And then Griffin was born and I had all these new concerns.

Some new parents don't sleep because the baby wakes them. That wasn't an issue for us, but I struggled to fall asleep, and in the morning I just couldn't get out bed without a big effort. I was often late for work, something very unusual for me, but wrote it off as needing to adjust my routine. I was having headaches and stomach issues, something I rarely had problems with. I was easily irritated and forced myself to just be quiet, to the point of clenching my jaws, just to prevent myself from venting at everyone and everything. Most evenings I stared at the TV, not even paying attention to what was on, just replaying the day's events in my head and imagining how things would have gone differently if only I had responded better or had the right knowledge or was better understood. I felt completely incompetent at everything - work, father, husband - and was settling in to a permanent state of not caring about any of it anyway.

Eventually it was bad enough that I knew something had to change. Cindy still didn't get it, she didn't see anything drastically different I guess, so I scheduled an appointment with a therapist through the Employee Assistance Program. On the first visit she sent me across the hall to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist confirmed what the counselor suspected; I was depressed. They put me on anti-depressants, scheduled weekly follow ups with both of them, and sent me home with some instructions on how to discuss this with my spouse. Once we got past the "why didn't you tell me you scheduled the appointment!" discussion, it clicked for Cindy and she realized that my earlier attempts to talk to her were a sign she had missed, she had missed all the signs.

By mid summer I was on a steady project at Mobil Oil and started getting my feet under me at work. I stayed on the medication for about 6 months. I joined a gym because I needed to get active before they would take me off the drugs. Eventually, I worked through it, but since that episode I'm hyper-aware of when I start feeling "off." It's a scary thing, knowing that you can be so easily, or unknowingly, broken.

The counseling revealed that I had many unresolved issues that I needed to work through, or at least learn to accept. The therapist was an older Jewish lady and sometime during the course of our discussions we talked about faith. I explained to her my conclusions about it all. Basically, after spending the first 17 years of my life being dragged to church I thought I knew exactly what it had to offer and that I didn't need it. In our last meeting, she encouraged me to re-visit all of the faith things that I thought I had figured out many years ago. She suggested some reading material, and also strongly suggested that I read not just "here's why you should believe books" but also the "faith is for suckers" side as well.

"You're a smart guy. You can figure it out. No one can tell you what to believe, but you have to believe in something other than yourself, because you, my friend, are imperfect. It's not easy. If it is, that's a clue you're doing it wrong. Dismissing faith because it was too hard for you to understand at 10 or 15 or 20 years old is too easy. Do the work. It should take your entire life to finish."

The early days of parenthood had a profound effect on my self-perception and my understanding of my purpose. Those days would influence my decisions for the next twenty years, and in retrospect the effect has all been positive. It is still marvelous, a miracle, and when I pause to think about it, to consider the impact of love and marriage and raising a child and how that has shaped me as a man, I can only conclude it is an undeserved blessing, because I am an imperfect man.