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Mike and I settled into married life. Well, I don't know if "settle" is the right word, but we definitely made a go of it. We had stupid arguments about where to put the wet towels and how to arrange the cabinets, but eventually we figured it out. I laugh now about being brought to tears over the first argument we had as a married couple. Literally, the fight was about where wet towels should go!

I had a few more weeks until my senior year of college began. I had just one more year to finish before I would be a proud graduate. The 2004 Olympics were on, and I spent most of my time laying on the couch feeling sorry for myself and watching the U.S. team win medal after medal. When a boring sport was on I would find myself watching Ellen or Finding Nemo, which would ultimately depress me since we had been calling the tiny little bundle of cells growing in my tummy Nemo for three months. It seems so silly now, but at the time I would just lie on the couch and cry and think of all the wonderful things we were going to miss out on now that I had miscarried. I would cry so long my eyes would turn red and puffy. I had no energy. I had no desire to get up and do anything. I thought to myself, "This must be what depression feels like... Wow it really does suck as much as the commercials say it does."

After lying around like that for most of the day, I would get a burst of energy around 3:00pm and try to scurry around the apartment, cleaning and organizing as I went before Mike got home from his new job. I would start dinner around 4:00pm so it would be hot and ready by the time he got home. He had staples in his diet I tried to accomodate, and I had certain things I would NOT eat under any circumstance that he learned to work around as well. He was definitely the better cook of the two of us, but I couldn't expect him to work forty hours a week, come home to a weeping wife, cook AND clean, too... could I? Well, no of course not. That wouldn't do at all. So, I tried my best to domesticate myself. The nights we were invited over to my parents or his parents for dinner were the best! My mom said she couldn't get used to cooking for a smaller family anyway, so we may as well come over and help them eat so there wouldn't be as many left-overs. It was a welcome invitation. Who knew how many family dinners we had left, anyway? While thinking this, my mind would suddenly flash back to the waiting room at the hospital where mom had her surgery...

"It will be ok," my cousin stroked my shoulder. She was doing her best not to fall apart herself. I kept thinking the tears would start falling from her almond colored eyes at any minute, but they never did. They just glazed over as she spoke. I stared at her, unblinking. Unthinking. I urged my mind to think. I urged it to try and process the events of the day, but it refused. I shifted my gaze back to the double swinging doors the surgeons had just gone back through. Two or three years. That is what they said. They had left the surgery earlier than expected and they had said, "There is less than a 1% chance of her beating this... she has two or three years left. That's it. Sorry." They were so robotic. I felt hatred and pity for them all at once. I wanted to slap them and hug them. Can you imagine having to tell an entire family that their matriarch was dying? I felt my knees give way and my limbs start to tingle. I hung on to my father as if he were a flotation device keeping me from becoming lost at sea. I don't remember how the chair appeared underneath me, all I know is that I was sitting in it out in the middle of the hallway when Amber was talking to me. Everyone else was gone. I don't know where they went. I just know that I was sitting in the chair, and Amber was kneeling in front of me, wearing a worrisome expression. It couldn't have been easy for her. But she looked so strong and sure that I almost believed her, "It will be ok. She's going to be ok. Bec--are you all right?" I couldn't even cry. I just sat there motionless and unresponsive. There was nothing to say...

"Could you set the table, Bec?" my mom called from the living room.
"Sure. Which plates? Strawberries?" I would ask, knowing full-well that we would use the twenty-four year old stoneware strawberry plates.
"Yes, that will be fine. Dinner will be done in a few minutes."
"Ok."

And I would set the table. I would wait for dinner. I would understand that I would always feel at home in my parents' house no matter how long I had been married. I would find out that it doesn't matter what you fight about-- it matters how you handle the fight and what happens afterwards. I would realize that it isn't about how much time you spend IN a house that makes it home-- it is WHO you spend that time with, and how you adapt that makes a house or apartment or condo or box on the corner a REAL home.