Blind Sided

After a fulfilling evening of conversation with a good friend last night, I decide to settle down with a puzzle book for a few minutes before I go to sleep. It was a good conversation, one that ended with a chat about the rumors she and I had heard about ourselves and each other over the last ten years. And although some of the things people said were strange/harsh sometimes, by the end we were both laughing and it was way too early to hang up, but we both have babies now and have to rise early. So there I was giggling to myself about how "cool" we really must have been (unbeknown to us), in high school for these people to find time in their day to spread rumors about us ten plus years later. But I digress. As I said I was sitting in my room when my fiancé walks in and wants to talk. I have to say that in the time we have cohabitated we have had exactly one heart to heart, the day I got off the plane.
A little background. Almost five years ago he was the best pressman at his company and they got a new machine. Well the machine was new to them at least. It was actually a 1950's paper press that no one in the company knew how to run, had no safety guards on it, and the company was too cheap to pay somebody to teach them. So what is the best course of action? They put their best guy on it because, "he can figure it out". The machine sucked his dominant hand into it, the only one there to help, turned the lever the wrong way in a panic to get him out, crushing his hand further. They got him out his right hand was degloved on 2 fingers and his thumb was ripped off. As he lay on the floor waiting for the ambulance, his bosses stood over him and asked when they could get this machine up and running again. Thus started what seems like a very long and drawn out, uphill battle. Here we are years and countless surgeries later, and he can hold his now almost 2 year old son for no more than 5 minutes at a time without pain.
Of course we have had trouble getting along cooped up all together all the time, and people don't understand why I don't leave him alone for any extended period of time. And for a while I have been wondering myself. He has been rude, and snappish, and anything else you can do while dealing with the loss of a body part. But he's never acknowledged it. Last night after I hung up, he came in my room and sat and apologized for every single offense in the tenure of our relationship thus far. And followed it with news of what I already knew about his lawyer being less than up to the task. He continued to spill his heart about his fears about what is coming for our family, about school, and money, and being snappy, and how scared he his. And then with a tear in his eye he asked me to open his bottle of water. He finally opened up, even if 3 years of apology is a little hard to swallow at once, he helped me gain a little hope in people last night, and even in myself. Because in a simple 30 minute monologue like apology I was able to forgive without a second thought, and because he let me in. So now I know, I put up with the mean because I knew that someday my prayers would be answered and he would see that maybe, just maybe, I was worth fighting for.