Life was so different before our daughter was born.
We laughed because Y2K turned out to be nothing.
We gasped as starter home prices crept to $150,000 in the suburbs.
And we wondered if we’d ever stay in a job for more than two or three years.
Eleven years ago, I was a different woman.
I wore smaller clothing sizes (before I was pregnant), drove cooler cars, and had a clean house that even on its worst day was still in far better shape than my current house ever is on its cleanest day.
I had a well-stocked craft room, and dreams of finishing an old-fashioned queen-size sampler before the baby was born. The quilt – with burgundy and green tones circa the late 1990s – is still unfinished. I worked on about four of its squares this year, so at this rate, I should be finished with it by the time my daughter graduates from high school.
Eleven years ago, my husband was a different man. He didn’t tear up during sappy movies, drive the speed limit, or coo over strangers’ babies.
His weekends revolved around fishing and fixing his truck.
He was pretty sure his dad didn’t know what he was talking about, and that my parents worried too much about me.
Eleven years ago, my husband and I were a different couple.
My husband and I drank coffee – we still do, but we did so while listening to musicians during open mic night at trendy coffee shops, or in the middle of the night at Denny’s after studying for finals or curled up on the couch together on a lazy weekend morning.
These days, we grab coffee at a drive-through espresso stand on our way to soccer games and family activities. It’s become less of a leisure “us” activity and more of a necessity to function because of kid-induced sleep deprivation.
We skied at White Pass as often as we could get up there. We went out for prime rib dinner almost every weekend. And we were proud parents of two “fur babies” – an Australian shepherd and a black lab.
Our dogs went everywhere with us. We were so obsessed with our pups: Almost all 36 photos that we have from our great 1999 Montana vacation are of the dogs as they ran in the yard, swam in Flathead Lake and slept in the sunshine. The only evidence that my husband and I were on the same trip are the two or three photos where we posed with our dogs.
Eleven years ago, our friends and families were different.
We often met up with friends after work to play pool, go to concerts, and catch hockey games.
We dreaded when our friends had kids, and could no longer hang out with us at the drop of a hat. Most of our friends didn’t have children back then; now most of our friends do.
We were the only “kids” who didn’t have kids in our family and were expected to spend every holiday dividing our time between his parents’ house and my parents’ house. Sometimes, we went to his grandparents’ house, too.
When our daughter turned 2, and we finally inherited a dining room table that had more than three chairs, my husband proclaimed that we were officially grown up and it was time to host our first holiday meal. We ended up with cranberry stains on our kitchen ceiling (don’t ask), a tray of carved turkey on the kitchen floor (10 minutes before dinner, of course) and no stuffing (I was going to make the instant kind anyway). Otherwise, it was a perfect meal.
Eleven years ago, the world was a different place.
Movies that involved kidnapping or kids getting hurt were just entertainment – they weren’t things that gave me nightmares, or made me want to walk out of a theater before the credits rolled.
Health insurance was a rip-off – it didn’t matter what plan we went with, my husband and I were never sick, anyway.
And we had everything we could possibly want, but realized something was missing in our lives. And that something – make it those somethings – turned out to be almost everything we’ve ever wanted.
Lisa Pemberton covers education for The Olympian. Reach her at 360-754-5433 or lpemberton@theolympian.com.
