Page 4 of Untangled
What brings you to the Amorous Advent challenge? Share your hopes for the next 24 days.
“Hey, babe?” I call to Daniel who has a bottle brush in one hand and a dish towel slung over his other shoulder. “When you’re done, come in here; I have something to show you.”
I debated all afternoon and evening about how to approach this, from the moment I got the small package addressed to Molly Hayes, confirming I did, in fact,commit to this challenge.This challengebeing the card deck I hold in my hand, which I’ve decided (unbeknownst to my husband) holds the key to our future happiness.
Is that fair of me? To put so much pressure on a process my spouse doesn’t know I’ve signed him up for? Probably not.
And yet.
I palm the deck in my hand, the stiff cardstock pressing against my fingers and leaving parallel dents across the tips. It’s 7:30 p.m., the baby is down for the night and Daniel has, by the looks of it, two bottles left to wash. This should give me approximately one and a half minutes to decide the position I want to take here.
It’s not that I think he’ll balk; he is agreeable by nature, and this should—in theory—be fun. It’s more that I worry he’ll see this attempt to connect as an indictment of who he is as a husband, or evidence of my unhappiness with him. Just like a husband shouldn’t buy his wife a vacuum for Mother’s Day, perhaps a wife shouldn’t buy her husband a pack of share-your-feelings cards, lest he think she believes he’s emotionally stunted. I’ll try to tread carefully.
“What’s up?” he asks as he turns from the sink and strides into the living room. The street light streaming through the window couches his face in shadow and he looks softer, younger than he is. It’s a flashback to Daniel at twenty-four when we were so certain about everything and didn’t know we shouldn’t have been. The moment is interrupted by a glimmer of light catching on the patch of gray hair that tuftsfrom his widow’s peak. He’s thirty-two again as he steps toward me on the couch.
“Sit,” I reply, while twisting my body toward his as he sinks into the leather. All six feet of him relaxes with a sigh—his arms stay loose at his sides, his legs fall open, he rolls his neck back and forth before rotating it in my direction. “So, I… have an idea for us,” I say. “It’s a little bit of work but I think it’ll be worth it.”
His eyebrows raise with curiosity. “Can I guess?” he asks.
I don’t get a chance to answer before he starts.
“You’re finally on board with us building a patio in the backyard?” His voice has a hopeful lilt that makes my stomach sink. I shake my head.
“Okay, maybe you want us to find and vet a babysitter so we can have standing date nights?” he asks. Thatissomething we need to do, and the guilt of not being ready for it—leaving Violet with a stranger so we can do something as unimportant as eating dinner out—claws in my chest.
“No, it’s not that. Though…” I sense an opportunity to connect the dots, and I take it. “Itisabout spending more quality time together. Want to see?” My heartbeat revs like the odometer on a Porsche that has seen a checkered flag. I hand Daniel the deck.
“A card game?” he asks. His chocolate eyes bounce between the stacked rectangle in his palm and my face, where I’m attempting to produce a casual smile.
“It’s not a game, really. It’s…more of an activity deck. There’s a card for each day between now and Christmas, and we’ll go through them together. Some have discussion prompts, others have tasks to complete. The goal is to, well,rekindleis the word they use. Find that spark again. I figured we could complete them in the evenings after Violet's bedtime?”
He makes a move to flip through the cards but I stop him with a hand on top of his. Even that unexpected bit of contact feels stilted, and if the simple act of laying my fingers on his skin is no longer easy or comfortable, we may need this experiment more than I thought.
“You can’t look ahead,” I say, catching his gaze. “The cards are in a specific order and build from one day to the next. If you’re… if you’re up for it, we should start with the first one.”
My fingertips grip the edges of the deck and lift it from his palm. I take the cover card with its image of a gift box, a ribbon tied in the shape of a heart, and place it on the cool leather cushion between us. The next card, Day One, stares back at me. “Here,” I say to Daniel and hold it for him to take.
“Hopes and goals?” he asks. He brings his other hand to his face and rubs it along his jaw. The stubble there scratches as it meets his skin.
“I know it’s an unfair request because you haven’t had much time to think about it, but maybe you could try? I’ll go first,” I offer.
While he hasn’t officially agreed to this endeavor—for tonight or for the next several weeks—he also hasn’t declined. I can only hope my vulnerability will convince him to share his own.
I steady myself with a deep breath that pushes my lungs against my pounding heart. “I miss who we used to be,howwe used to be.” Another deep inhale buys me time to collect the courage to continue. “Somehow, over the years, we’ve gotten so… knotted up in our roles and responsibilities, and then in being Mom and Dad, that it feels like I can hardly reach you anymore. My hope for this month is that we become…” I search for the right word. The silence stretches between us. “...untangled, I guess.”
Daniel nods. He rakes the hand from his jaw through his hair, and the threads of silver catch more light as he does.
“I want that too,” is what he says then. His eyes grow soft as he swallows. “Listen, I’m not sure how this works—the daily challenges or whatever—but I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge there is…”
Now it’s his turn to think, and I know he’s searching for a turn of phrase that reflects our reality but doesn’t condemn us. “There is room for improvement,” he continues. “If you want to do this, let’s do this.”
“Yeah?” I ask. I didn’t expect him to say no, but his easy agreement pinches my stomach. It’s his implicit acknowledgement that things are strained enough between us to need something like this.
“Yeah. Maybe it will be fun,” he says as his lips rise into a smirk. “Maybe I’ll get to touch your boobs one day.” He dodges left a split second before the pillow I intend to hit him with lands.
“Well maybeI’llget to share all the things you do that drive me insane, like how you take every opportunity you can to joke about my boobs.” I say it with a soft smile, with a chuckle at the base of my throat.
“Molly, you know I take your chest very seriously.” He levels his rich brown eyes at me and there’s a playfulness that makes me wonder if the Advent cards could possibly work this quickly? “I wouldneverjoke about that.”
