We'd moved to Gig Harbor a few months earlier when Ty and I were sitting outside at Morso, a trendy restaurant with a view of the water. I had the halibut and multiple vodka tonics. Owen was close to four and Wes was right around eighteen months. Getting out for date nights was a rare occurrence, and broaching this subject was heavy on my heart. "Do you want another baby?" I asked. He replied that in all honesty, not really. The boys are crazy and our day-to-day is already so chaotic that adding to it feels overwhelming. I understood, 100 percent. But there was a longing deep in my soul for another child, and though I knew it would be hard, easy had never been my goal. When making the decision whether or not to grow your family, a pro-and-con list will never suffice. If you want to, nothing else matters. And at that point I knew that a third baby was destined to be part of ours. Ty, displaying all the characteristics that led me to marry him, proceeded to share that he understood the importance. He would never deny me the desires of my heart and agreed that we'd move forward with trying to conceive.
That was in August. Hazel was born just under a year later.
Having a third baby made for a difficult year indeed. She was a terrible sleeper and kept us up all hours of the night. When Hazel was about four months old and I had returned to work—at the height of our overwhelm—Jake started peeing in the house, which he hadn't done in years. A few months and $5,000 later revealed an aggressive form of lymphoma. We had to put him down in May, and our family that felt complete for the first time that July was suddenly missing part of what made it whole. We were all devastated.
The way we manifested our grief was very different. Our opposite coping mechanisms weren't a problem, but our lack of communication surrounding them was. Ty was ready to get a new dog the next week, and I thought we would wait at least a year. Neither of us came right out and said that until we got tangled in a web of misunderstanding. Ty thought a puppy would be the best way to heal. I was so exhausted from adjusting to three kids, an unusually taxing year at work, and the trauma of losing Jake that I couldn't fathom having another thing to care for.
If I understood his point of view correctly, it more or less whittled down to the fact that when I wanted another baby and Ty didn't, he gave way to my dreams. And now that he wanted another dog and I didn't, I wasn't willing to make the same sacrifice for him. From my perspective, of course we were going to get another dog, just not right this second. I asked him how he would have felt about having Hazel if I'd brought it up in the delivery room after we had Weston. We had many conversations about it and came to somewhat of a mutual understanding, but it put a huge strain on our marriage. We bickered more in that year than I can ever remember.
Once I realized how important this was, I decided to get Ty a puppy as a surprise. I still didn't feel totally ready but thought of it like ripping off a band-aid. I knew once we took the plunge we'd quickly adjust. I was thinking I'd do it for his birthday in September, but when I emailed the breeder, there was a litter that would be available August tenth, which was the weekend of our tenth anniversary. That seemed like an even better time, so I put down a deposit and tried to think of a clever way to tell Ty. We had a weekend in Bend planned to celebrate our anniversary, and I scheduled to pick the dog up the day after we got home.
The two or three days leading up to our anniversary, we were not getting along well. Knowing this milestone was looming, we tried to brush it under the rug and ended up arguing that morning. When Ty got home from work, the argument turned into a meaningful discussion and the topic of a puppy came up again. At the end of the conversation, Ty stated that he was fine waiting to get another dog. He understood my point, as much as he could, and was okay with it. I couldn't have planned a more perfect time to tell him a puppy was waiting at Canyon Meadow Farms to join our family in a few short days. He thought I was joking, and then cried. Okay, teared up is probably a more accurate description. An amazing weekend celebrating the decade between saying our vows and our current life followed.
Marriage is refining, holy work. Ty and I show up for each other every day, practice love as a verb, and are willing to make sacrifices to support each other's dreams. I vacuum up white dog hair daily and Ty learned to do a ponytail. There are hard days and hard seasons, but ten years later I am more proud of our partnership, our marriage, and our family than I could have imagined on that overcast August day in 2009.
Here's to ten years, to Hazel, to Beau, and to a family that will always make space for everybody's dreams.
