The Bug, the Straight Jacket, and My Wife

I love my wife.

As I sit here, watching her strapped to a hospital gurney like a mental ward patient with a need for some frontal lobe experimentation, with cords sending scribbly notes to a machine and her stomach wrapped in our baby's own personal mini straight jacket, I can't help but think it.

She's so beautiful.

I love her.

To think that she would go through all this and more for our little guy- in many ways for me- and still smile on this side of it...

She knows what's coming. The twinkle in her eye, despite it, is what leaves me in awe.

There's something about a woman.

She has absolutely no tolerance for anything harmless, but a raw, visceral love for everything that matters.

She shrieks at a bug if it hops too close to her as she's drenching it with Raid, but whimpers with sad eyes when she finds out it was a grasshopper, a "good guy."

The bug

She's somehow starving every two hours, but offers me the large half of her grilled Rueben if she finds out I'm hungry, too.

She asks in a quiet, wavery voice if I'll walk with her to the bathroom while watching America's Most Wanted because it's dark and scary and there could be monsters in there, "Babe, can you come with me to the bathroom..." but she has to watch to the end to find out what happens to the people.

The shadows are real. The bugs ferocious. But she'd take on a mountain lion to protect a little guy who hasn't yet seen the light of day.

She'd challenge a thousand good guy bugs, and maybe even a few bad guys, if they threatened a space that I and a little boy will soon call home. Without Raid.

She at the same time makes no sense and all the sense in the world.

And I'm madly in love with her.

I love the way her smile flashes. I love her full, loud laugh. I love the way her voice quivers when she's in the slightest bit uncertain. I love how she calls, "Babe..." when I'm altogether way too late to bed.

And how she holds my hand underneath the covers.

I know in a couple days she'll probably kick and scream and try to rip my head off, but it'll be for a good cause.

And don't be fooled, she's the tough one.

She's doing the most loving thing in the world. She's doing it for me and for our son.

And if she needs, I'll walk her to the bathroom, no matter how scary it gets.