Past, Present & Future

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. My hubby treated me to a very cool gift that I've been really wanting: a negative scanner! I'm so excited, because for years I've been itching to find a way to preserve the 21 years worth of negatives and slides I have in binders and bins in a closet. My old family pictures, from my childhood, are scattered amongst my siblings in boxes and are in no particular order, but the photographs of my family, my children's childhood, are organized and labeled. They could see our whole history in pictures if they wanted to drag out heavy albums, bins of grouped prints and box after box of slides. I'd like it to be easier. Plus, paper photographs and film deteriorate over time. I want to preserve them now, while I still can.

So, we trekked over to Best Buy and I picked up this little gem. I experimented with it last night, and I was overall pleased with the results. The image quality is pretty good for the money I spent. Anything better would cost me closer to the $500 and up range for a pro scanner. That's not likely to happen. I had a good time learning how to use it, and I found some cute pictures of my oldest, Kelly when she was just 2, with Shawn's grandmother, who recently passed away. I scanned those and sent them to his mom as a special Mother's Day gift from me. This one is my favorite:



While I was looking through some of my negatives an interesting thought came to me. I realized that for every picture that fills me with warm and wonderful memories, there is another one that makes me sad. Before I go any further, let me just say: if you are the person who feels that it's inappropriate for a woman to publicly say anything critical about her husband, then please stop reading this post and move on. If you understand that life and especially marriage is not always perfect and that sometimes a woman needs to share her thoughts, then by all means, read on. If you're a regular reader here then you know my DH is not always the model husband/father. He tries, sometimes, and I know he loves us, but he takes moods, has a bit of a mean streak, and often acts more like a spoiled teenage boy than a man. He's gotten better in recent years and matured in many ways, but looking back I wonder why I put up with him in our younger years. Of course, I wasn't an angel either so it would be unfair to heap all the blame for rough times on him.

That's what I tell myself anyway. I found myself questioning that logic as I flipped through pages of memories and came across image after image that does not represent the truth. There are so many of them. Pictures that look like happy family moments, but to me bring back unpleasant memories of conflict. There is one of him and Kelly when she was about 2. To anyone else it looks like they're examining the contents of a bucket together and that he's showing her something out of it. I remember that he was looking in the bucket and she was desperately wanting to be included. He was angry with me over some petty argument, and being mean to her was his childish way of getting back at me. Another image a few years later is a shot of him holding Ashley when she was a baby, and she was asleep with her head on his shoulder. The untrained viewer sees that and says, oh how sweet, but I know better. I know that he was in a terrible mood that day and was mean to everyone.

I don't share these memories with the kids (or anyone really) very often. My older girls know, because they experienced it. Things are better for the little girls, because these days there is a lot less outright meanness and petty cruelty. They don't experience Mean Daddy nearly as much as they do stare-at-the-video-game-and-ignore-everyone-and-everything-Dad. And they get fun-to-play-with-creative-and-silly-Daddy a lot more often as well. I'm thankful for that.

I suppose everyone looks back on their past and sees the imperfect truth from time to time, right? Or, maybe not. Maybe he really is verbally abusive, as my sister likes to tell me. I feel like that was true a lot more all those years ago when I was snapping those pictures than it is today. He's still a big kid, but a much more mellow one. There's not anything I would characterize as abuse going on now, just a big lack of vision (maturity?) as to his role as a husband and father. He is a hard worker and a good provider, but deep down believes that is the extent of his responsibility. He believes it is his choice whether to participate or not in household chores, errands and parenting. Since I don't "work", that's all on me. When it comes to parenting and home management, my daughter Ashley is a stronger partner than he is. In moments of anger when I tell him he wouldn't last 5 minutes doing all that I do, he tells me to go out and earn a living. The thing is, I did that too, and the story was the same. When I was also working full-time, more hours than he was and making more money, all the domestic stuff was still 90% me. When I was working part-time and Aspen was a baby, I couldn't even count on him to care for
her while I worked, which is why now I don't.

I could spend my days stewing over all of this, but that would be pointless. The bottom line is that we've been together 21.5 years and have kids who need us both. We love them, they love us. We still love each other. I think we lack respect for each other more than we lack love. Sometimes things are good, sometimes not, but they're rarely ugly like they used to be. Neither of us would want to leave. I know, because we've discussed that in the recent past.

So, as I go into my 21st Mother's Day, I'm thankful for the positive changes that have taken place, and thankful that the Lord has blessed our marriage with four beautiful little girls. I'm appreciative of how hard my hubby works to provide for us and thankful that I am able to be at home with the children.

As I begin preserving our history, I'm thankful that we've made it this far, and I'm hopeful for our future.