It's the Little Things

For me, it's the little things. One of which being this…

From the day we both started working full-time jobs, at around 5 pm, I would get a call at work, "Linda, it's for you!" In the blur of the pharmacy chaos the call always catches me by surprise, a familiar voice on the other end of the line. A caller that only wanted to know, "How's your day going?" I sigh in relief, knowing I can talk freely, openly, and honestly about my current state.

I put the prescription pad down; it's not a doctor. I close the screen and take my hands off the keyboard; it's not a patient. I feel my shoulders relax, the tension releasing, and I take my first intentional breath of the day. It's the one call I look forward to every day; it's from my husband. My staff smiles at me as I back away from my station, and I casually talk about the kids and what I ate for lunch; I tell him whatever the first thing that comes to mind. 

The calls are brief; five minutes max. Sometimes I have to hang up immediately as a patient glares at me, wondering what's taking so long to fill her prescription (hold on lady, it's been 2 minutes, I'm sorry). Sometimes, I let him fill in the silence if I had nothing to say or I’m distracted. And when I don't have anything good to say, I'll ask him, "How was your day?". 

It's been 12 years since he started calling me at work. He has my work phone number saved as "Pharmacy Manager," and sometimes he'll forget I'm at work and call my personal number. He lets it ring once, then hangs up and calls the pharmacy. When he does that, I expect him to be calling soon, so I keep an eye on my phone and watch the caller id for his name to pop up. 

Our conversations are casual; he is one person I'm ok with silence filling the space. Nevertheless, these calls leave me rejuvenated, make me smile, and power me through the last four hours of my shift. Even, and maybe especially after, having babies this is our only time to talk uninterrupted. 

He tells me his plans for the evening: to pick up the baby from daycare and then drive to the elementary school to pick up our son. Some days it's a swim lesson day, so he will drive the kids 45 minutes to the indoor pool for the lesson. On other days, he sounds happy to be heading home to take the kids on a walk before it gets dark.

Have I ever told him how much I value these calls? No…I've just recently mentioned how much these calls mean to me (as in yesterday). On Valentine's day, I wrote it on his card. I told him, "I love that you always call in to check on me at work." 

I miss these evenings with my family. There are positives and negatives to working 12-hour shifts. I go back and forth between loving and hating them. I know how my husband feels about them, but instead of flat out telling me, he will say, "It's so nice when you are home," and that's all I need to hear. This stage of loving each other looks so entirely different, with bust lives, career, babies, it all comes down to the little things

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Love After Babies".