Dedication.

Meet my husband Frank.  This is him with his sisters, when their youth was effortless, and their grins were toothless.  He's so freakin' cute in this picture, it makes me squirm.  I'm sure this is what my son would have looked like.  We have a magnet on our fridge that he made in about 2nd grade with a picture of himself.  It is on a wooden heart, with the school picture in the middle.  I'm certain that he made it for his mother, maybe for Mother's Day.  This picture was back in the day when Frank thought about Legos, baseball, and fishing with Grandpa.

Frank and I met in high school.  I had a class with a kid named Eric, and would wait for Eric by his locker.  Frank would walk by and stop to talk to Eric, and eventually he introduced us.  We were 14.  Our lockers were fairly close (he was before about 10 Patel's, and I was after), and sophmore year we found out we had a keyborading class together.  Sophmore year was also the year that I tore up my knee for the first time and had surgery.  He offered to carry my books for me (to get out of class) for the semester, and we became friends, eventhough he was dating someone else.  Actually, at the time, it didn't bother me one bit that he was dating someone else, because he was just a friend.  We had a study hall junior year, and senior year had gym together.  He broke his nose playing basketball in class, and when his shirt ran out of white, used the bottom of my shirt to get him to the trainer.  I vividly remember helping him to the trainer, going with him to have it rebroken, and the dual black eyes and hideous brown splint he wore.  His mother and I sat in the waiting room together for that procedure, until the nurse called her back into the recovery room - he was awake.   And I remember this disappointment on her face when she came back to the waiting room and said, "He wants you.".

After high school, he was deciding on a career, and was looking into fixing cars.  He was working, and I was attending community college.  Since we had remained friends, I invited him to my cousin's wedding as my date.  I consider May 24th, 1998 our first official date.  Shortly after that, we established our coupleness, and spent our late teens and early 20's driving around in his Monte Carlo and drinking Rolling Rock in friend's basements.  We went on some road trips to Lake Superior and Hilton Head, and never really thought about a future together.  He was talking about getting his own place the night before he proposed.  I was awfully confused when he gave me the ring, because the previous day he was going to go condo shopping.  My exact response to the presentation of the ring:  "Are you sure???"  Real nice of me.  But, I said yes, and we planned our wedding in 18 months.  He made decisions with me, and 4 months before our actual nuptuals we bought our first house.  A gem.  Frank has single-handedly put his blood, sweat and tears into his house.  He takes such pride in all the work that he does.  I mean everything - from simply making the bed to recaulking a bathroom.  He is perfection through and through.

Still, after almost 17 years of knowing each other, he still makes me laugh each day.  Sometimes it's what he says, somtimes it's how he seranades me with Celine Dion, sometimes it's the mechanics of which he just is.  There are days that we can finish each other's sentences, or have a 'That's what I was just thinking!" moment.  But everyday I laugh.  Even the day our son was dorn (not a typo, a combination of dead and born).  When the doctor told us that our situation had a 1 and 200,000 chance of happening, Frank looked at me and stated that he was going to get a lottery ticket.  Gee, weren't we so lucky.  That made me laugh, because it was so ridiculous and true. 

So, he has been playing the numbers 219 (Quinn was dorn on 2/19/09) in the Illinois Lottery strikepot (a $500 pot) once a week since then.  Usually, we pick a ticket up on our way to a Blackhawks game, or my parents house, or where ever it is we may be going.  This past Sunday we were running a bit late for the game, and although we stopped at the gas station, he forgot to get the ticket.  And it hit.  The exact numbers.  219.  We had talked during the game on Sunday, that if we ever hit the strikepot, we were going to get seats right on the glass.  Damn it!

I know that we have many years left together, and we can actually envision ourselves getting old together.  There is not a better person on this planet that I would rather do that with.  Of course, I hope that our life is filled with children and grandchildren and holidays and parties and movie nights and camping trips and sporting events and shopping trips and happiness.  But, if biological children aren't in our destiny, then I know that we won't have a lonely life.  Even if it ultimately is just the two of us.  But, I can't find the words to express just how great of a father he would be to a living child.  If you are a mom or dad out there that is not a parent to a lost child, you have no idea how hard this job is.  And, I am able to say that MY husband is the best at it.  Such grace, dignity, compassion, thoughfulness, and selflessness.  I know that he will transfer all those qualities and many more onto a live child someday. 

I want the general population to remember that although he masks his feelings well, he lost a child too.  Many people forget that.  New moms and dads don't take into consideration that, as hard as being a new parent must be, we would change places with you in a second.  Yes, he would gladly go to work tomorrow after being up all night with a crying child.  Yes, he would gladly run up and down the stairs to get this and that and the other thing for the baby because I forgot it.  Yes, he would gladly wipe shit off of the baby, and the blanket, and the bed, and the walls.  Yes, he would gladly take projectile breastmilk vomit to the chest and face.  And somewhere in the middle of all of that, my husband would look at me, and say, "Honey, how are you doing?  Is there anything that I can get you?"

Nope, I'm the luckiest girl alive.