Father's Day

Today was Marshall's first Father's Day. I wasn't sure how he would feel today, but I gathered it would be something like what I felt on Mother's Day. It's hard to describe but it was an odd feeling. It was one of those days where everything just felt a little off. This isn't what your first Mother's or Father's Day was supposed to be like. We should be holding our baby boy. Instead, we are trying to hold ourselves together over the loss of our baby boy. Knowing this might be one of those off days for Marshall, I tried to make it as pleasant for him as I could. Some people might think that the best thing to do on days like this is just to ignore it, but I disagree. I know on Mother's Day all I could think of was that I'm a mother now - a mother without a child. It was the oddest feeling to me. It was a day where I just felt like the whole world was backwards from the way it should be. So this morning I gave Marshall a card - the miracle card that I had purchased a week ago. The one that I didn't know exactly why I purchased it at the time but the more I thought about it, the more I decided I wanted to give it to Marshall. I wanted him to be reminded that today when things seem so wrong and backwards that he should remember that everything is a miracle. It was a miracle Nolan was ever here at all - let alone that he lived for nearly 9 months. It was a miracle that we became parents at all and maybe we will be lucky enough to have that miracle happen to us twice. I also gave Marshall two more things to remind him of Nolan. One was some money to help pay for his tattoo he wants to get to remind him of Nolan. The other was a music journal I had found at Barnes and Nobles. Marshall keeps saying how he is looking forward to writing music and using music to help him heal so this journal is a place for him to put that music and his lyrics. Hopefully, it will be overflowing with lyrics soon.

I think now having experienced his first Father's Day, Marshall had a new appreciation for how I felt on Mother's Day. It was nice to be recognized on the day, instead of people pretending like it didn't happen - like I didn't actually become a mother. Sure maybe I'm not a mother in the sense of raising a child, but I certainly was a mother. I grew a baby inside me for 34 weeks and I went through labor and I birthed a baby. I even experienced some of the joys of motherhood - just not the part where I hold my crying newborn baby. Marshall too fathered a baby. He felt him kick inside me, he talked to him, sang to him - did all the things fathers can do before the baby actually comes out. He was there with me holding my hand when I started having contractions and he stayed while I birthed our son. So today he needed to be recognized for the amazing father and husband he is and will be to our future children. I can't wait to see him with them. One thing this whole experience has done for both of us has been to open our eyes. We will have such a different take on life and children from now on.

Before Marshall had to leave to go back to Charleston, we decided to meet some of the crew from Homeland for lunch at the Original Pancake House in Southpark for what they call Dutch Baby Sundays. They started Dutch Baby Sundays last year even though I only went to a few of them and I never ordered a Dutch Baby. The Dutch Baby just happens to be this very decadent crepe that the Original Pancake House makes. It's full of whipped butter, powdered sugar, fresh fruit, lemon juice and syrup. Only two people out of our party of eight tried it. The rest of us settled for normal brunch items - omelets, sausage, bacon, etc. It was a great meal coupled with some really great conversation. We might not have accomplished much today, but we did manage to overcome another first for us - Marshall's first Father's Day.