(Cr)happy 4th of July

I wish I could say that our 4th of July was great, but honestly, it was a pretty crappy day.

Jeff is battling yet another UTI (urinary tract infection). It's his third one in a row, and he's pretty tired of feeling like crap. It was a beautiful morning, and while Evie was playing in the pool with my parents, Jeff and I were stuck in his room attending to stuff like cutting his hair, trimming his beard, doing breathing treatments, and administering medications.  Neither one of us wanted to be there. We wanted to be out in the backyard swimming with our daughter - not relying on my parents to do that for us.

In the afternoon, I took Evie to a local park to celebrate the 4th with lots of festivities. Jeff still wasn't feeling good, so my mom stayed home with him. Evie had fun playing in the bounce house and eating a sno cone. I had fun watching her have fun, but what I really wanted was for Jeff to be there with us.

Not Jeff in his chair ... I wanted the old Jeff there.

I wanted to have the kind of fun we had last year when we went to the HB parade and spent the whole day hanging out with friends and watching fireworks. It was one of the last normal family things we did before the accident.

I watched as the families at the park interacted with one another. Kids running around screaming. Parents standing around talking to one another. Folks rushing here and there. There were hundreds of people at the park today. And not one of them was in a wheelchair.

I looked at them with jealousy. Just last year, I was one of those people. I know you can't judge people by just looking at them. Everyone is going through something. But in just viewing them from the outside, I felt like I was glimpsing back at myself and my family and how we used to be a short year ago.

Evie and I got back home, and Jeff could tell something was off with me. At the end of the day, he looked at me and said, "I'm sorry." He was apologizing simply because he knew I was having a bad day. That's what is so great about our relationship. When I'm having one of these days, Jeff knows that I'm not upset with him. Instead, he knows I'm angry at this injury. I'm angry at how unfair life can be.  And today, I was just having an "I miss our old life" kind of day.

Thankfully, our night ended with watching fireworks both on TV and outside our back window. Evie was happy. Her reactions to the fireworks were a precious reminder that for her, this 4th of July was fun and magical. No comparisons to the past. She just looks forward.

Tomorrow is a new day, and our weekend has just begun. I'm excited to see what it will bring.