The emergency room wasn't where I expected to spend Christmas Eve. But that's where Marathon Girl and I spent our evening together. It all started Thursday afternoon when Marathon Girl went for a run. Almost home she tripped and fell. She broke her fall with her hands. One was fine. The other was scraped and bruised up quite a bit. It wasn't very painful so we decided to take a wait and see approach.
But by the evening of December 24, parts of her hand began to swell and we thought it best to have it checked out. So we left the kids with Grandma and Grandpa and drove to the emergency room.
Much to our surprise, the emergency room was packed with Christmas related injuries. The guy who walked in after us sliced open his hand when he was assembling one of his kids Christmas presents.
An hour later we were called back. After another hour of waiting there were X-rays taken of Marathon Girl's hand. Then the verdict came back: Her hand was not broken but severely sprained. They gave her a splint for her hand, told her to ice it and take ibuprofen and said we were free to go home.
We picked up the kids from their grandparents, took them home and put them in bed for the night.
Aidan's too young to know or understand who Santa Clause is but it didn't stop him from being excited upon seeing all the presents under the tree Christmas morning. He walked around, looking at them, saying "Wow!" I can now understand why my parent's looked forward to Christmas morning just to see the looks on our faces.
Aidan enjoyed opening both his and Steven's presents. (Steven slept through the entire present opening experience.) After opening one, he would sit and play with the new toy, very pleased that someone had given him something that made a lot of noise and had bright, flashing lights.
For Christmas I had a small number (20) copies of my book printed for friends and family. Even though I was proud of the book, it was a hard present to give. There's a lot of personal experiences in there that I had never shared with anyone other than Marathon Girl and it's always nerve wracking for me to bare my should to those I'm close to – especially when it involves showing how human I am.
But initial feedback from friends and family has been very positive.
Marathon Girl's father finished the book yesterday and told me that he thoroughly enjoyed it.
"Are you still glad I married your daughter?" I said.
He laughed and said that he was glad that I married her and was part of the family. And my sister just called and said she and her husband couldn't put it down. She also said the book answered a lot of questions she always had about what happened the day my wife died and what life was like for me.
I was glad to hear her say that. If it puts to rest questions friends and family have about my first wife's death and how I handled things, then it was well worth all the time spent writing it.