Hitting our Stride

I am looking at myself in the mirror tonight, dissecting my appearance the way women often do as they get older, when I realize I no longer feel familiar with myself. Where once my breasts were alabaster and full of life, and for many years, with milk to feed my children, they are now a roadmap of blue veins and stretch marks. Skin from my pregnancies now sits loose on my hips, and no amount of situps will alleviate it. My hair, once a wild mane of brown curls is now striped with gray, thick and wiry near my temples. This woman isn't the one I watched grow up. She isn't the one who budded in early adolescence and thrived in young adulthood. She isn't the one who fruitfully carried so many children to term, feeling ripe as a goddess for nine months, seven times over. This reflection is of my mother and her mother before her, and I want to say that I look forward to knowing her as she ages, but I am lying to myself.

My husband, born just five weeks before me, has become sexier with time. It is an unfair advantage that men have over us, I suppose. While we get old, they become distinguished. We ravage ourselves through our experiences and rather than badges of honor, we are given consolation prizes. He is downstairs in his treadmill room, I can hear the rotations of the belt; steady, steady like him. He runs miles every day, outside in fair weather and indoors in the rain. He has impressive thigh muscles, toned from all of these years of exercise. I sometimes wonder if the young women he passes on the trails look at him the way I am sure he looks at them. It used to bother me, watching his eyes roam over the fit female athletes. There are so many things I can do- I can bear him sons and daughters, I can cook him a seven course meal with one of my hands bound behind me, I can and have read him to sleep when he has insomnia. But I cannot be that for him, the running partner, the outdoorsy girl.

We met while we were in tenth grade, though we attended different high schools. He and a group of friends showed up at a party in my hometown, and all it took was one look from him to make me weak in the knees. Our daughter was born two years later, much to my mother's dismay and my joy, and then our first son only eighteen months later. I fell into my role as mother immediately, while for him, fatherhood was, in the beginning, like trying to catch water in a sieve. All of the things that came naturally to me were a struggle for him. At night, after working overtime, he would come home and put on his workout clothes to run before even kissing the kids. I peaked while he floundered, and now I feel our roles have been reversed. The children have moved on, finding themselves, and my job has gone from full time to temporary (position closed).

And yet. And yet. He looks at me with stars in his eyes still, all these years later. While I remained still and grew old, he grew up and ran toward everything. After our third baby hit the toddler years, something clicked with him. He went back to school, became a wunderkind in his field, and overnight, he fell head over heels with fatherhood. And not once in all these years, going on thirty now, has he stopped looking at me in that way of his. He cocks his head and regards me like I am still the world's most lovely mystery to solve. He paws at me while I cook us dinner, his hands snaking around me like a teenager. He gathers handfuls of all of my extra curves like he has discovered plentiful treasure in a dish saved all for him. When we stand side by side, he doesn't see that we are no longer on an equal playing field. He sees a team, and defers to me as the captain. Try as I might, I cannot see what he sees, and though I pretend, I know I am a terrible actor.

The rhythm of the treadmill slows, and I know his routine well enough to know he will come upstairs, ankles cracking with each step, and burst into our room like a peacock, feathers splayed. He will sing silly songs in the shower and emerge ravenous for a snack, and later for me. We will watch the newest show and I will work my way through a crossword puzzle, and he will absentmindedly run his fingers through my hair. He will fall asleep quickly and I will lie awake for hours, with a carousel in my brain- the horses going so fast I can't even grasp one to stay onboard.

I look at myself one last time in the mirror, mapping my life so far along my breasts, a life that has been full of gifts and sorrow and joy, and this man. This man, who through it all, has remained my constant. He brings me plants instead of flowers, because he hates when they die. He brings me sudoku books because he know I won't wear jewelry. He fills my stockings with combs so he can braid my hair after my showers.

I put my robe on and head into the bedroom as he walks in, his feathers showing, and I kiss him so hard that he laughs and asks me what's that for? and I shrug. How do I tell him that while I have spent the last three years feeling sorry for myself, I forgot to feel happy for him. That it has been a joy to watch him live his life like it is a marathon. There aren't words. So instead I say, maybe I will go running with you tomorrow. And he looks at me with happy surprise and asks really. And I say maybe. Maybe, I say. And I drop the robe and lead him to the shower.