the mother's day that wasn't

My husband has this bizarre aversion to gifts.  He hates receiving them, which means he hates giving them.  It is horribly selfish and has always been a sore point in our relationship.  In years past he has also been a jerk about mother's day, saying that he shouldn't be expected to do anything for me because I wasn't a mother (ouch -- those words were actually uttered the mother's day after my miscarriage when we were starting into the thick of the IF saga).  But I always thought it was silly to miss the opportunity to have fun by celebrating being mother to his cat.  So I started getting myself gifts, wrapping them and signing the card from the cat.  He gives really good gifts, like a purse I'd been eye-ing for a long time.

But this year I thought it would be different. 

I can be so fucking stupid.

I guess I should have known it would go bad when, by last Thursday, there had been no discussion of what we ought to do on mother's day.  He seemed like it pained him to make any plans, which I can sort of understand since he is going through a lot with the death of his father and all the stress of moving his mother out of their childhood home and up here into a senior living community.  But in the back of my mind I knew celebrating mother's day with our new little girl would/could be a really fun diversion from all of the shit life had thrown at us recently, a chance to focus on the really good we'd been hit with too.

But no plans were being made.  Then a really close friend said that she was having cake at her house this afternoon to celebrate her birthday as well as mother's day, and asked me to come over to help celebrate.  I told Dh that I really wanted to go.  He got kind of mad and said that he really did not (he is very antisocial).  I told him that he didn't have to go but that it was really important to me that M and I go. 

So this morning I should have also read the signs.  I got up to nurse M at 5am for the third time that night (1am, 3am, and now 5am).  I go back to sleep about 5:45am and she starts stirring at 6:15am, which she typically does because she's ready to get up at that time.  Dh offers to take care of her, which entailed essentially nothing more than freeing her hands from her swaddle so that she could suck on her fists and enjoy herself for about 15 more minutes while we slept.  When she starts stirring loudly again Dh says that she is eager to celebrate mother's day and that I should stay in bed to await the celebration.

He then brings me M with a very stinky dirty diaper.  He goes out to the car and brings in a balloon, some flowers, a couple of cards, and a bag of little peppermint patties that I'm guessing were all purchased at the grocery store on his way home from work last night at 10pm.  These are my mother's day gifts, which I accept graciously, and I totally enjoy watching my little girl being fascinated by the balloon.

He then rolls over and goes back to sleep.  I was very awake by that time so I get up.  I change M's diaper and bring her back to him.  I say that I'm going to make some coffee, would he like any?  No, he wants to go back to sleep.  Which he does for the next hour and a half.

I make myself some breakfast and drink the coffee by myself.

He then gets up, plops M (who was snoozing with him) with me and then goes and puts on work clothes, indicating that he plans to work in the yard but would come back in in a couple of hours and would go to my friend's with me.  (now, he is only working in the yard because he threw a fit and said that we couldn't pay someone to clean up the yard once a month because he could do it, failing to recognize that he never has time to do it unless it is, as you guessed it, mother's day, because he spends every other day at work).

I am pissed, but don't really say anything.  I take M with me and go shower and get dressed.  M nurses, plays, naps, etc. I thought about taking her out to the marina or somewhere else just the two of us for a special walk, get some photos as it was a beautiful day.  But since Dh said he'd come back in in a couple of hours I decided to wait on him, thinking we could have a nice lunch together before going to my friend's at 2pm.

A big mistake.  I know better.  I do this all the time, wait around because I don't want to leave him out, only to end up extremely disappointed with my feelings hurt because he really had no intention of hanging out with me but did not just say so.

I decide to clean out my fucking closet to pass the time.  On mother's day, my first mother's day. 

At 1:30pm he comes back in, filthy, notices that I am doing something in my closet while juggling M in my arms and kindly asks if I want him to watch her for a little while.

I told him that that would have been nice a few hours ago but that we were leaving in a few minutes.

I can't really remember what ensued over the next 25 minutes but it boiled down to a repeat of the past.  He hates having to do anything to make me (or anyone else) feel special and loved.  He hates being social and so it was mean of me to ruin the day by telling him that I wanted to go to my friend's house for an hour or two to celebrate her birthday and mother's day.  I guess he would have preferred it if I waited around ALL day and did nothing rather than just half of the day, and had no friends on top of it.

As an important aside, this is the friend who came and kept me company while I was in labor with M so Dh could run home to pack, since he failed to do so in anticipation of M's impending birth.  She also conceived her first daughter with IVF and had gone with me to my surgery when Dh was out of town last winter. So, needless to say, motherhood is an important theme in our relationship.  Of course I might want to spend a little time celebrating with her today.

I left with M and we had a nice time.  A couple of hours later I called home to see what Dh wanted to do for the evening.  He said he wanted to spend it with us.  So I came home.  The backyard was beautiful in the afternoon sun so I took some self-portraits with M thanks to the timer on my camera.  That was depressing and reminded me of how I was the only person who took photos of me pregnant.  But I wanted to have some marker of the day with my daughter.  Dh then came out and suggested a walk.  We went for a nice walk.  Didn't talk about anything really except for his mom and M.  Ordered a pizza for dinner.  I gave M a bath and went through her nighttime routine.  Dh made a salad to go with the pizza and got everything together for dinner in front of the tv so we could watch Obama on 60 minutes. 

M doesn't do well with the tv at this time of night.  It is the antithesis of calming and so she cries.  Just to make it even worse, Dh has the volume up really loud (I think the volume was a passive-aggressive hint that it had to be loud because she cries sometimes and it really hurts his ears.  I suppose this means he's trying to tell me that she's making him go deaf.)

Of course M gets through only a few minutes of Obama and loses it.  So I take her back to her room and we nurse and get sleepy up there. 

Dh eventually finishes dinner, brings the dishes to the kitchen and then comes to check on us, offering to take M while I finish my dinner.  She's pretty ready to go to sleep at this point so I put her in her crib, he offers to sit with her in case she wakes up.  He sits in her dark room for quite a long time.

I am then waiting on the couch for the comforter cover to finish drying (the cat barfed on it a few nights ago, and I discovered lots of yucky spots on it when changing the sheets during the closet clean-out session).  No one noticed that it was needing laundering while I was gone, and then no one thought to move it from the washer to the dryer while I was settling M down for the night.

Dh eventually comes and sits in the living room with me.  After a very long time I tell him that I wish I could do the day over again, as it was nothing like what I had wanted.  He said he didn't want to say anything because he didn't want to make it worse.  So he didn't.

The comforter cover finishes drying and we go to put it on the bed.  Dh picks up his pillow and says he's going to sleep in the guest bedroom.  Why?  Because he is upset that he disappointed me.  I tell him that sleeping in the other room is only going to make it worse because then I'll feel like he's mad at me.  So he stays.

But I lay in bed getting more and more sad.  Since it is clearly going to be a no-sleep night for me, as I am too upset to sleep and M will start her 2 hour bouts soon, I get up to write a few emails that need to go out tomorrow.  Better to take care of them before my brain is even more fried than it already is.

There is an email from an undergrad in my lab wishing me a happy mother's day.  There are all kinds of messages on facebook.  Oh, and did I mention that a close colleague sent me flowers that arrived this evening?  It all brings tears to my eyes.  All these people think this is such a special day for me, my first mother's day with little M.  And my own husband just couldn't fucking be there for me.  He had to ruin it. 

He got up to see what I was doing.  He told me that my dad had sent him an email earlier this week, pretending to be M and asking Dh to help her do something for me.  Dh was unhappy that he'd been "reminded".  So I ask him if that's why he wouldn't do anything with me today, as retribution for my dad wanting to make sure Dh knew it was important for him to make me feel special today?

He said no, but had no explanation for why he couldn't muster up some compassion for me today other than that he hates things like this.  I told him that it wasn't his choice any more, that he had to suck it up and live with these opportunities to celebrate the people we love now that M is involved.  I am not going to let him ever do this kind of thing to her.  She deserves fun days that give us an opportunity to celebrate the people we love, even if it is a silly fabricated holiday.  Even if her dollies give her a mother's day gift on mother's day...  life is too full of sadness not to take every opportunity presented to you to celebrate it and be joyful.

It will take me a while to forgive him for this.  I wasn't even asking for much.  A diaper change.  Breakfast together in our PJs.  How hard is that?  Apparently, extremely.