“C’mon,” Matt says. “It’ll be fun.”
“Immediately no,” I reply.
It’s the Fourth of July long weekend, and we’re spending the day at an amusement park here in Germany. Most of our five kids are on the log ride right now. Only Jayna, the oldest, sits out, having assumed the responsibility of holding everyone’s light sweaters on this cool, cloudy day so they don’t get soaked. There’s one of those sadistic rides that takes you up several stories strapped and harnessed into a seat, rotates you slowly at the top so you can see the whole world you’re about to depart from, then drops you to your doom, and my crazy husband wants me to go on it with him.
“Why noooot??”
My eyebrows raise. “Seriously? Have you forgotten what happened on the wooden roller coaster?”
A year ago, we took the kids to Everland, Korea’s most famous amusement park. There’s a ride called the T Express that’s tied for the world’s tallest wooden roller coaster. I’d been on it once a few years before at the cajoling of my kids and promised myself I would never do it again. There’s an insanely steep drop, G’s that make it feel as if someone is pushing your head down from behind, and you get slammed from side to side. The effect is not just terrifying but actually painful. Matt didn’t ride because of some neck problems. Somehow, though, the kids convinced me to do it again all in the name of being a Fun Mom™️. This time, we were stalled at the end of the ride for a few minutes just outside the loading platform. I sat there, thinking about how everything hurt, and then noticed something dripping onto the seat beside me… something red… Blood!?!?! Where was it coming from? As another drop hit the seat, it felt like an ominous scene in a horror movie.
“Sky!” I turned to our second daughter who was seated next to me. “I think I’m bleeding!” She watched with wide eyes as I swiped at my face then my forehead. My hand was clean, but two more drops appeared on the seat. That’s when I felt the warm liquid trickling down my arm. We followed its trail and discovered a tiny but deep gash on my elbow. To this day, I have no idea how it happened, because–trust me–my hands death-gripped the safety bar for the entire ride.
“Oh my gosh, Mom, only you…”
I do have a history of bizarre injuries. Nevertheless, upon exiting the ride as a bloodied survivor, I couldn’t help but think it was time to end my roller coaster days.
“This isn’t a roller coaster, though,” Matt’s telling me now. “You can’t possibly get hurt.”
“Unless something malfunctions, and we plummet to our deaths.”
He gives me a look and sighs. “Well, I’m going on it, whether or not you come with me.”
“Cool! I’ll wave!” I tell him and watch him stride quickly toward the ride. And then suddenly I’m running after him. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I mutter once I’ve caught up. “I hate falling.”
There’s no line, this being a weekday, so in mere moments, we are strapped into our seats and the teenager who works the ride is checking the harness.
Why am I doing this? It won’t kill me, right? I can do crazy things, and this isn’t that crazy. We’re still the same silly kids we were all those years ago… aren’t we?
//
Here’s what I noticed first about Matt: his eyes. They’re blue, sloping down to a little crease at the outer corners. But I also noticed his smile–easy, warm, and genuine. When we (finally) talked (after months of catching his eye and smiling across rooms), he made me laugh from the first words he said. I felt like I’d found home and been welcomed inside. On our first real date, he opened the car door for me, and then the door to the movie theater. My arms could have done the same thing just fine, but I admired the demonstration of thoughtfulness.
One day not long before we left Korea, we went out with good friends on a double date. We parked next to them in the parking lot, and as we got to our car after dinner–without thought on either of our parts–Matt walked to the passenger side to open the door and hold it for me as I slid onto the seat.
“Aw, Matt!” our friend shouted from the driver’s side of his car. “You’re making me look bad!” We laughed, but as we drove away, I thought about how reflexive it all was for him, not showmanship or virtue signaling, but a genuine reflection of his character.
“Your needs before mine, your life before my own.”
We said these words in our wedding vows when we were ridiculously young and could not possibly have grasped their full gravity. And yet I’ve watched him live them out in a thousand ways. He’s provided for our not-small family and supported me time and again in my writing (though it has cost far more than I’ve ever made from it), cheering me on the whole time. He’s bought me my piano and keyboard. He’s taken trips just because he knows I love the destination, and encouraged me to travel so many times, even when he had to stay home and work.
“…your life before my own.”
//
The ride lifts us up, higher and higher. Despite the cloud cover, we can see for miles all around us. This amusement park is set rather obscurely in the countryside, so as we begin our slow turn at the very top, we see gently rolling hills and cows in nearby pastures, chewing grass and napping. Electricity-generating windmills that dot the countryside all over Germany stand tall in the distance.
//
Here’s what it takes for me to sleep these days: 500 milligrams of magnesium glycinate taken approximately an hour for bed; my special “bedtime” tea; the fan set to (at least) “low,” (depending on the season) but also enough bedding to make me feel swaddled; a complicated arrangement of just the right pillows. I don’t need Matt on the other side of the bed. He’s been away for work so much over the years that I’ve finally learned to sleep with or without him. But when he’s home, I have a special set of earplugs that I push into my ears because sometimes his CPAP machine makes a weird whistling sound that tells my sleeping, subconscious brain that one of our kids just screamed. It’s heart-stopping–hence my need for the earplugs.
“What did you say?” I asked last night after climbing into bed, extracting one of my earplugs. (I can still hear the sound of his voice through the mask when the earplugs are in, just not the whistling.)
He pulled the mask to the side. “I said I love you.”
“I love you too,” I answered, kissing him before settling into my nest of pillows and practicing my French and German on Duolingo as he went to sleep.
Funny story. Not long after we married, we traveled to Paris for the first time. I had taken French all through high school and more than two years in college, but, having been a vegetarian since age fifteen, I paid little attention to the names of various meats. Why, I reasoned, would I need to know that? As the waiter placed a giant leg of lamb in front of me, though, I learned that knowing what not to order is extremely important.
But it turns out that older dogs can learn new tricks. My French has improved to the point that whenever we make the drive from our house to France, I can easily order vegetarian meals and ice cream, joke with the waiters, purchase tickets for museums and transportation, and offer to take pictures for French strangers at scenic points. When I do, I feel Matt’s eyes on me, admiring, and my heart still gives a little jump.
Likewise, in an effort to help with some neck and back issues that developed over the years, he’s started a workout routine that has not only alleviated much of his pain but given him some impressive muscles and new definition. I do not hate this. Not at all.
//
The circling at the top of the ride stops, and my whole body tenses, knowing the fall is coming. I hold my breath, but when at least we drop, I don’t scream. I don’t even close my eyes.
//
It didn’t take long last night as I did my French and German lessons for my eyelids to droop, and I removed my reading glasses. For my first forty years of life, I had perfect vision. But somehow, in the past few years, words became increasingly blurry until I discovered the magic of readers.
How interesting it is that our vision yields as we age, that up-close details take on a soft focus.
We know each other well after all these years together; we know just how far we are from perfect. We can get short-tempered with each other and say terrible things in the heat of battle. I could recite a list of his weaknesses, and he could give a longer one of mine. But he also knows the moment something is wrong, before I’ve dared to say it. When I confess fears or embarrassments with tears in my eyes, he listens. And then later, he puts his arms around in the kitchen and says, “Hey, I just want you to know. I love you more than ever. It’s kind of weird, but it’s true.”
I looked over at Matt, already sound asleep, his now-silver hair against the pillow. It’s so easy for me to remember when it was golden brown and sun-streaked that night at the youth pastor’s pool party, before we officially started dating, when we talked for hours like we were the only people there. Or the darker brown it was when he crawled across our living room floor with our kids on his back, their screams of laughter filling the whole house.
It’s almost not fair how good this new color looks on him. The tween daughter of one of our close friends asked him where he had his hair done like that. Matt thought she was joking and laughed.
“No, really,” she persisted. “Who did it?”
“Ummm… God? Time? I don’t know. I just… got older.”
“Oh. Well, it looks really good,” she said, nodding earnestly.
Like I said, it isn’t fair.
//
Before I know it, the ride is–thankfully–over. We’ve survived, no worse for the wear. Matt’s laughing in his seat beside me. The harnesses release, and we step down from the ride. My legs shake, but I’m smiling too. I feel like the silly, carefree teenagers we once were and at the same time the forty-somethings with a gaggle of kids and a mortgage and enough memories to fill dozens of books.
“That was fun! I can’t believe you came with me!” he says, grabbing my hand as we walk back to the table where all our kids are now waiting for us.
I can’t either. But I’m so glad I did.
This is so sweet. I love the picture of a marriage that is deepening through the years, that we grow into eachother. What a beautiful thing to look forward to 💛
I was with you on the ride and all the other places. A fun read!