She has been a regular overnight
guest in my home for years. However, this was the first sleepover since my
wedding.
On November 1, 2014, I got
married. In Jesse, I found the strong yet caring partner I had always
wanted in my dating relationships. I had met him via an Internet dating service
almost exactly one year prior. Neither of us had ever been married before.
Jesse owns a large house in Anoka County. However, his job at a
carton manufacturer is located 30 miles closer to my studio condo. Given the
quality of relationships which by this time I have and enjoy here, we decided
that Jesse would move in with me after our wedding.
It was not the easiest choice either of us have ever made. The first night home from our honeymoon, I cried wondering how we would possibly endure sharing 450 square feet of living space!
Over a period of four months, to some extent, we have become accustomed to it. Recently we brought in a
wheeled computer desk to hold essential electronics: Jesse’s large computer monitor,
his computer tower, two sources of Internet connections (one mine and one his--ahem!),
my wireless computer keyboard and mouse and my USB-port multiplier. As a
result, we have a “floating office” at the side of our dining room table. On
weekends—and pertinently for sleepovers, I can literally push it away to a
different corner of our home.
From the time Chloe and her
siblings met Jesse the fall prior, they had wondered how his presence would affect their
sleepovers.
Fortunately, Jesse has a tender heart toward “the little ones.”
By this time in our marriage, Jesse typically
spends Saturdays at his country home working on his vehicles or on his brothers’
vehicles. For the sleepover, we agreed he would stay overnight at the country
home, then come back to the city for hot breakfast Sunday morning.
Before I got
married, sleepover breakfasts consisted of cold, super-sugary sweet rolls!
If my life has changed a lot in recent months, Chloe’s has
been changing almost as rapidly her whole life. To prepare for her arrival and
to accommodate her developing interests, I brainstormed quite a few activities in advance: testing the game she had created for AWANA;
testing the chemistry experiment I had planned for her younger siblings; card-making;
attending a University of Minnesota women’s gymnastics meet;
visiting the Textile Center; perusing her AWANA workbook; and oral
readings of the book “The Secret Garden.” I also wrote down drawing one another. Chloe had made some
contributions to the list as well: watching the movie “Soul Surfer”; perusing
American Girl Doll magazines.
To my surprise, the first activity she chose was drawing. She
drew me at my wedding using a framed photo of Jesse and me on our walls.
While she
has drawn me many times in the past, her depictions of my eye-glasses always give me a start.
“You don’t look that bad,” she told me one time when I winced.
Sunday morning, we gave Jesse a recap of the previous day’s
events as we ate the bacon, eggs and cinnamon toast he had prepared. We
told him how we had walked to the University of Minnesota Sports Stadium to watch the women’s
gymnastics competition, a qualifying event for the Big Ten conference finals. In
the seven years I have lived in the area, it was the first time I became interested in a Gopher sporting event. Chloe and Jesse both laughed when I referred to Minnesota’s rising gymnastics star, Lindsey
Mable, as “Lindsey Whalen.”
Over the past winter, Jesse had attended one of Chloe’s gymnastics meets with me.
Is it difficult to move from one uneven bar to the other? Jesse asked her.
“Sometimes,” Chloe said. More advanced gymnasts typically wear special gloves, she added. At her level, though, the main problem was that her hands would sweat.
“They get sweaty, and so we put on chalk,” she explained.
As it turned out, her dad was running a little late in order to pick her up. In the past, our sleepovers have often become a little rushed at the end, so it was nice being able to linger over a conversation. Chloe leisurely brushed her teeth, gathered her artwork, and put the movie back in its DVD cover and in her bag.
Downstairs at the back of the building, Jesse and I finally saw her off together!
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