I'm Sorry...Love, Your Husband: Honest, Hilarious Stories From a Father of Three Who Made All the Mistakes (and Made up for Them)
192
I'm Sorry...Love, Your Husband: Honest, Hilarious Stories From a Father of Three Who Made All the Mistakes (and Made up for Them)
192eBook
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Overview
Marriage and Kids are No Joke
He may not win Father of the Year, but Clint Edwards has won the hearts of thousands— including the New York Times, Scary Mommy and Good Morning America—thanks to his candor and irreverence when it comes to raising kids, being married and learning from his mistakes.
Clint has three children: Tristan (the know it all), Norah (the snarky princess), and Aspen (the worst roommate ever). He describes parenting as “a million different gears turning in a million different directions, all of them covered in sour milk.” In this inspiring and unconventional book of essays, he sheds light on the darker yet hilarious side of domestic life.
Owning up to all his mishaps and dumbassery, Edwards shares essays on just about every topic fellow spouses and parents can appreciate, including: stupid things he’s said to his pregnant wife, the trauma of taking a toddler shopping, revelations on buying a minivan and the struggle to not fight the nosy neighbor (who is five years old).
Clint’s funny, heartwarming account of the terrifying yet completely rewarding life of a parent is a breath of fresh air. Each essay in I’m Sorry...Love, Your Husband will have you thinking finally, someone gets it.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781624145339 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Page Street Publishing |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Sales rank: | 767,676 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
MARRIAGE
THE NOSY NEIGHBOR AND OUR MESSY HOUSE
I was building shelves in the garage when our neighbor girl, one of my four-year-old daughter's nosy friends, approached me and said, "I just saw in your house. It's pretty dirty. Norah's mommy needs to clean more."
She was a curly-haired, blond-headed little five-year-old in jeans and a brightly colored T-shirt who often ventured from her yard into ours. When I say often, I mean several times a day. We lived in a small neighborhood in rural Oregon, population 1,600. Kids didn't wander neighborhoods like they did when I was a kid back in the '80s, when we went from house to house, sometimes miles from home, looking for someone to play with. But they definitely ventured a house or two over. The house next to us was a rental, and that's where this girl was living. She was one of two families who'd ended up living next to us over the past couple of years, and this wasn't the first time she'd peeked in our windows. She had a nasty habit of doing that, regardless of the day and time.
It was a common occurrence for me to look up from my meal, my family seated at the dinner table, and see this young lady gazing at me from the window next to the dining room. It's funny, really. Crap like this seemed charming in shows like Leave It to Beaver, but in real life it's incredibly irritating to have some little kid peeking in on your every moment, asking if your daughter can play and making snide comments about your home.
I did have empathy for her, however. Her mother was single, and she worked a full-time job. In a lot of ways, her situation reminded me of the one I grew up in. And I think that's the main reason I never approached this girl's parent. As irritating as she was, I didn't want to add more stress to a single mother.
Ironically, just the day before this little girl commented on the state of our house, Mel and I had discussed putting curtains in our front windows to keep her from peeking inside. We hadn't gotten around to it, however, so now this nosy little neighbor was placing my wife on trial for keeping a messy house. She had a hand on her hip, eyes open wide, waiting for a response.
"Some people find comments like that rude," I said.
She looked at me with a snarky smile and said, "Yup!"
The suckiest part about what five-year-olds say is that they are 100 percent honest. And, indeed, our house was a mess. At the time, I could've probably listed a million reasons why we had clutter piles, random installments of underwear, laundry baskets full of clean laundry sitting precariously in the middle of the living room, cracker crumbs spackled about the carpet, and so on. There always seemed to be a bracelet loom, a couple of dolls, a Play-Doh kit and a few dirty dishes on the table. The sink was often full of dishes, and our garage was a wreck of boxes. The reason I was building shelves was to try to add some order to the chaos.
Because of the rental houses next door and the one across the street, the number of children in our neighborhood waxed and waned. At this particular time, we were at an all-time neighbor kids high. The rental across the street had a family with five or six kids. I honestly don't know how many children really lived there. Perhaps they were cousins or stepkids. They all had the same brown hair and eyes. I'm not the kind of person to get to know my neighbors, so I simply assumed they all came from the brown-haired, brown- eyed adults who lived in the home. For all I know, though, they could have been running an orphanage. I couldn't keep track of all the children entering and exiting that house. The nosy little girl's family next door had another five kids. For the past several months we always had random kids hanging out in our living room, on the porch or in my children's rooms, eating our food and making messes by getting out our toys and not putting them back.
My two older children, Tristan and Norah, loved it.
Mel and I didn't.
We'd also just had a new baby, Aspen, which was easily the biggest (and best) reason for our messy house. Few things are as disruptive as a new baby, and considering Mel and I were struggling to handle the transition from two kids to three, which truthfully felt like I was juggling chain saws and someone asked me to hold a baby, our house was exceptionally bad. Not that we had piles of garbage or anything particularly nasty like that. It was kid clutter and some dirty dishes. It's the stuff that people crop out of the background when posting pictures of their family on Facebook or shove into another room when inviting company. But this nosy little girl, peeking in our windows, got the full reality of our mess, and she was more than happy to tell my wife, who was currently recovering from a cesarean, that she needed to get her act together.
At least in her case, I can give her the benefit of the doubt. She was five years old. She didn't really understand the realities of parenting and family. I hadn't taken the time to peek in her windows, so I didn't know the state of her house, but I had to assume that it wasn't much better than ours. I mean, honestly, if she and her siblings were half as inconsiderate and messy at their own home as they were in our home, their house had to look like a garbage truck crashed into a rummage sale.
Her older brother didn't even knock anymore. This ten-year-old dark- haired sports enthusiast who predominantly wore brightly colored off-brand sports clothing with captions like Football Is Life and Pass Me the Ball once walked into my house, poured himself a glass of milk, drank half of it, left the jug along with the half-empty glass on the counter and then walked out. I was sitting on the sofa folding laundry as he did it. I assumed he was there to play with my eight-year-old son, Tristan, but he wasn't. He just wanted some milk.
What a dick move.
I mean, seriously, were we an open kitchen? The least he could have done was put the milk away. Wait, the least he could have done was knock and ask for something to drink. Wait, wait, the least he could have done was put up the toilet seat when he peed at my house.
I suppose that's a different story altogether.
The whole milk situation made me feel walked on, and to top it all off, his sister felt that we had a messy house. I know that some kids are better or worse behaved when at other people's homes, but what Mel and I later referred to as Milkgate 2014 went down in the history books of jackass neighbor-kid moves.
Sometimes I daydreamed of walking into the home next door and pulling the same milk-drinking action. Or perhaps just looking in their windows and making snide comments.
Or maybe peeing on their toilet seat.
But the problem is, I'm an adult now, so I have to take these sorts of things with a grain of salt. I have to be understanding and grown-up about it all, even in moments when I really, really don't want to.
And yet, with all the factors coming at us — new baby, young children, crappy neighbor kids — I still felt ashamed of our messy house. I think that's the really frustrating part about clean-house judgment. I think most families aren't all that much better at keeping their house tidy than Mel and I are. They are simply better at hiding it. They are more diligent about tucking things in back rooms and cleaning the visible spots. And perhaps that's what I'd find by looking in my neighbors' windows, a clean living room, while the rest of the house looked as bad, or even worse, than my own.
I don't know if it's part of a parent's genetics to try to give excuses for a messy house, or if it's something we all learn growing up. All parents since the history of ever have felt the shame of judgment when a visitor, regardless of his or her age, has given their messy house that snide, twisted-lip look that seems to say, "I just saw in your house. It's pretty dirty."
And while my house was messy on the day of the little girl's comment, there are people with messier houses. I've seen them. And when I was young, I'd go to these houses and say rotten things like, "I just saw in your house. It's pretty dirty," same as that little girl.
And I think that is part of what drove me so crazy about her. I saw so much of my childhood in her judgmental snarky little butt face. I felt confident that she ran home each evening after peeking in my windows and told her mother all about our mess, half of which she and her siblings assisted with. Then she and her mother would laugh and laugh and judge their messy-house neighbors. Then her mother might say something like, "If she really loved her family, she'd clean the house more."
My mother used to say crap like that.
Obviously it scarred me for life. But I think it scarred mothers most of all. Because the thing is, it always comes down to blaming the mother.
I think that is one of the things that bothered me the most about what that little girl said in my garage. She blamed Mel for our messy house, like I used to.
I'm not happy about it.
I'll tell you that right now.
Shortly after Mel became a stay-at-home mom, I started getting really judgmental. This was about five years earlier, when Mel and I moved to Minnesota for me to attend graduate school. We had two kids then, and with my graduate stipend, scholarships, student loans and the lower cost of living in the Midwest, combined with all the time demands of graduate school, it made sense for Mel to quit her job at the Home Depot, and stay home with the kids. We were both 26 at the time and had been married for about four years. Mel staying home with the kids was something she'd longed for during the majority of our marriage. And while I was happy to have her home with the kids, I started looking at the state of the house and thinking, "You have one job! One job! To take care of the home."
We lived in a three-bedroom townhouse. It was just over 1,000 square feet, and it was the largest house we'd ever lived in. When I came home from school or work, I often made snide comments about the dishes or the toys or the crackers on the carpet. I sounded a lot like the nosy girl next door.
I never really confronted her head-on; it was always something said under my breath, a childish bite at her performance as a mother. At the time, it was my way of dropping a not-so-subtle hint without taking the issue head-on.
When I think back on these comments, however, I realize I was completely spineless. And insensitive.
I often took the snide comment route early in our marriage. I think a lot of men do, hopeful that by making snide remarks we can incite change. However, it doesn't really work that way. What actually happened is it made Mel feel insecure, and it made me look like a judgmental prick (take notes, new fathers).
Part of the problem with this transition of Mel staying home with the kids was a lack of understanding. Although I'd been a father for almost three years and felt like I had it down, I was, without a doubt, a rookie. Case in point: I didn't understand what it meant to take care of children full-time. I'd never experienced it. Our oldest was about to turn three, and while I'd been an active parent, between college and work I was always a part-time father. And Mel, she was a rookie, too. She'd always been a full-time employee and a part-time mother. Our son had been raised in part by Mel, me and my mother- in-law.
But with our move to Minnesota, that all changed. We had no family. It was just us, and now Mel was a full-time mom, and I was a full-time student and breadwinner. And that all added up to me leaning on the assumption that Mel should be some June Cleaver of a housekeeper and mother, as if that were an actual realistic goal.
I never considered that my kids don't care if we recently dusted or swept or vacuumed. They'll drop Cheerios anyway. When I was a stay-at-home dad a few years later, I'd sweep beneath the table, and ten minutes later it would be dirty again. I'd have the kids put their toys away before going to bed, and by morning, before I even got up, they were back out.
I don't want to speak for all kids, but my kids are remarkable mess makers.
About six months into Mel being a stay-at-home mom, she finally had enough of my snide comments, and we got into an argument about the house. I told her it was embarrassing. I asked her what she did all day. "It really can't be that hard to keep the house clean," I said.
We got into a huge fight. Mel told me that I needed to realize what she was up against. And then she told me something that really hit home. She said, "Sometimes it comes down to cleaning the house or taking Tristan and Norah to the park, spending time having fun with them, or teaching them to read or write. Sometimes I can either do the dishes, or teach our son how to ride a bike or our daughter how to walk. I'd rather do those things, frankly. I'd rather not be that mom who ignores our kids and myself because I'm so busy worrying about what the neighbors might think of our messy house."
It was then that I stopped looking at the dirty dishes and assuming that they were evidence of Mel sitting around all day. Instead, I got up myself and started washing the dishes. I realized that this was not her mess but our mess, and I started pitching in more.
I stopped worrying about the house and started paying attention to the development of our children. I started to pay attention to how happy they were and the kind of relationship they shared with their mother, and I noticed that we had a messy house and really happy, bright kids.
That's what really matters.
The weekend after our nosy neighbor commented on the state of my house, I was hanging curtains in our front windows as she peeked in and asked what I was doing. It was a warm day in Oregon, so the widows were open. Her blond curls were in pigtails making her appear innocent enough, but behind her eyes and dimpled smile I could see it coming, some crappy, dickhead comment that she couldn't keep to herself.
"Looks like your house is still messy," she said. Then she tilted her head down and to the side, her lips twisted, eyes looking up, as though she'd told me some undeniable truth. "If Norah's mom really loved her, she'd clean the house more."
I took a breath.
I wanted to take a drink.
I stopped what I was doing and stepped outside.
I walked past the nosy neighbor girl.
In front of our house were two cement steps at the end of our patio. I sat down and then patted the seat next to me. She took a seat. She was in pink shorts that rested just above the knee. Her shins were bruised from playing outside, and her shoes were pink and covered in pictures of Disney princesses that matched her off-white Frozen T-shirt. She looked up at me with a curious dimpled grin, and I'll admit, part of me wanted to smack this kid.
I mean, I wouldn't. I never would, but I was flaming pissed. But here's where things get complicated with little kids, even the ones that aren't yours. Her face was soft and sweet and innocent. She was a cute kid, no doubt about it, and I can say with 100 percent conviction that God made children cute because of situations like this. It's the only way they could possibly survive into adulthood.
"Let me tell you something," I said. Then I paused for a moment, trying to figure out what I was going to say to this little girl so that she would understand. "The mess isn't Norah's mommy's mess. It's our family's mess. Norah's mommy doesn't own that mess. In fact, sometimes it's your mess because you are over here so often."
She continued to give me a blank, grinning stare.
"And even if it was Norah's mommy's mess, Norah's mom spends a lot of time making sure that Norah is happy. She spends a lot of time making sure that Norah and her brother are learning new things and growing up to be the best Noract, sometimes it's your mess because you are over here so often."
She continued to give me a blank, grinning stare.
"And even if it was Norah's mommy's mess, Norah's mom spends a lot of time making sure that Norah is happy. She spends a lot of time making sure that Norah and her brother are learning new things and growing up to be the best Norah and Tristan they can be. She also just had a baby, which isn't easy at all. And you know what?"
"What," she said.
"I think all of that is more important than a clean house. So if our house is messy, it's because we are spending that time with our children. And that's not a bad thing. It's actually a really good thing. Does that make sense?"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "I'm Sorry ... Love, Your Husband"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Clint Edwards.
Excerpted by permission of Page Street Publishing Co..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
"Don't You Think You're Overreacting?",
MARRIAGE,
The Nosy Neighbor and Our Messy House,
Dad Can Stay Home with Sick Kids, Too, Ya Know?,
Why My Wife Stays Up Late,
Dad Bod. Mom Bod. Sexy Bod.,
I Am the Fourth Child,
I Learned a Lot about Change When My Wife Became a (Shudder) ... Vegetarian,
Chill, Dude. She's Just Venting.,
Sorry to Break It to You, but Sex Isn't an Obligation,
There Are Things I Do That Make Me Less Attractive,
Sleep Is Currency in Marriage,
Eleven Years in, and I Finally See How Amazing My Wife Looks in a Nice Restaurant,
PREGNANCY AND CHILDBIRTH,
All the Things I Never Should've Said to My Pregnant Wife,
Get This ... Sex Is a Very Small Part of Baby Making,
Pregnancy Pro Tips I Learned Through Trial and Error ... Mostly Error,
Maternity Leave Isn't a Vacation,
I Wasn't Man Enough to Witness Childbirth,
Attempting (and Failing) to Get Out of a Vasectomy,
PARENTING,
I Thought I Was a Good Father Until I Took My Toddler Shopping,
25 Things People Do Daily That Are More Shameful Than Breastfeeding in Public,
If I Had to Choose Between Having My Son's Help and Slamming My Hand in a Car Door, I'd Take the Car Door,
I Grudgingly Let My Son Blow All His Money,
Not Withstanding My Lack of Qualifications, Being the Father of Daughters Is Pretty Remarkable,
All the Things I Never Should've Said After Our First Child (Not a Comprehensive List),
Just Because I Get Up in the Night Doesn't Mean I Deserve Praise,
My Kids Will Never Act Like That (How Wrong I Was),
I Paid For A Princess Makeover but Now Have No Regrets,
What I Said I'd Never Do as a Parent, and All the Ways I've Caved,
Let's Talk about Poop for a Moment,
I Bought a Minivan (Epic Eye Roll),
It Goes by Pretty Fast. Stop and Look Around.,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,