The Long, Hard Night

I was not there to take pictures of our own "Black Friday" so this snapshot of Justin from Chris's phone is all we have.

My husband is an early riser. He has been long before I ever met him. Years ago he decided to get back into shape and with a full-time job and family he had to find the time by sacrificing sleep. He rises around 3:30 to 4 am EVERY morning. Even on weekends. So it was on the morning after Thanksgiving.

He did not rise early for Black Friday deals. He rose to once again meet our challenge of trying to make a permanent home for our family. I rose with him but it was hard. I usually go with him, sometimes with kids, rarely without and help out as I am able. This morning I could feel that I had reached the end of the line, the limits of my CFS had been crossed and I knew I could not go down to East Sacramento with him for the first time since our adventure began.

This decision was made agonizingly over the next several hours as he prepared to leave. We have been together for six years now but so much of our time is divided between work and family and life that at night we collapse into bed barely able to give each other a bedtime kiss before passing out from exhaustion. It is because of all this that every moment that I can find to be with him is precious. I am extremely blessed to be joined with a man with whom every second of shoveling trash or peeling back rotten carpet on my hands and knees is quality time building a better life together. This feeling is what made the decision to stay home in Folsom with the kids so hard.

I think he may have been relieved when I admitted that I just did not have the strength to go that morning. He had watched my swift decline over the last week and the weather was so cold that I would be forced to stay inside our neighbor’s house with the kids anyway. I was heartsick when he went away. I so wanted to do all of this together, to spend this time with him, but I had to do the smart thing and it sucked.

Chris worked for a few hours on Friday alone. Usually Flying Eagle helped us but he was gone until Monday because of the holidays. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to help the day after Thanksgiving and so I imagined he would be alone all day. Then I got the news that Justin was joining him and I felt better.

Justin has only come into our lives recently; he read the article in the Sacrament Bee and offered his help. He came over last Saturday and when he showed up to work he did not hold back. Over the past week he has put in several days of work and again rejoined my husband on Friday to take on a monumental task. (What task you may ask? Some things we are keeping a secret for the unveiling. Come to the party and we will tell you!) The hours ticked by as I cleaned our current home catching up on neglected laundry and scrubbing the stove. (Even though I could not work on the 58^th St house I would do my best to pull my weight when and where I could.) Dinner time came around and Chris and Justin were still working. Usually when it got dark we stopped work because we had very limited lighting.

I contacted Chris and was told that the project they were working on could not be halted in the middle and that they had to keep working. I was pretty unhappy. I had used caring for kids and housework to keep myself occupied. Now the house sparkled and there was no more laundry to fold. The kids were settled and all I could do was fret over not being there with my husband. Hours ticked by. I started counting how many hours Chris had been gone working on the house. 12 hours, 13, hours, 15 hours… I would ask Chris to check in, worried that he was exhausting himself; worried that he was working alone. But no, Justin was still there and he would not leave my husband until they both quit work at 2:30 am Saturday morning. I desperately tried to stay awake (not a good thing for those with autoimmune disorders) but finally drifted off at 1:30 am. I felt disloyal for sleeping while my husband worked hard on our dream, while someone new to our family was there with him when I could not be. When he finally got home at 3 in the morning he was cold and dirty. He crawled into bed and I happily snuggled up next to him. That feeling that I get whenever he holds me blossomed in my chest and I twined my warm legs to warm his cold ones. We fell asleep for only a few hours before having to wake and start all over again. The house would not wait, time is running out. But for those few hours, I had the love of my life back and he was holding me in his arms and everything was right with the world.