my sunday husband

About once every 6 weeks or so, Hyphen comes to church with us--and it is awesome. He gets all dressed up (raised Episcopalian, he is horrified by the amount of jeans in Catholic church.) and we go together, he kisses me during the sign of peace and holds our hand during the Our Father. He takes Annabelle to the cry room, if the need arises, and afterwards we talk to our friends and then go to Chinatown for lunch, and we feel like a real family. There is something about him coming that makes Sunday beautiful and special and takes away any trace of that Johnny Cash -i'm -so-lonely-and-I-smell-chicken-frying-and-want-to -blow-my-brains-out-because it-is-Sunday-and-I-miss-mama song out of your day.

But that is only once every six weeks. The rest of the time, I am in a relationship with another man. It started in the summer and continues through today, he is my church husband. He must have some weird kind of B.O, that everyone can smell but me, because there is never anyone sitting around him and since I am always running a couple of minutes late, no matter how early I start getting ready, I always end up sitting next to him. I can't really tell how old he is--he could be anywhere from 25-40. He always comes alone. He tolerates Annabelle's squirmy-ness with a detached good humor and during the height of my pregnancy would occasionally help me with the knealer. We don't kiss, but we do hold hands during the Our Father and he picks up the toys/sippys/necklaces that Annabelle drops and hands them to me. I don't know his name, but feel as though it must be Marco or Marcus or Mark. But most likely Marco. We have never spoken, except to say peace be with you, until today.

Today is the day Mexican people celebrate La Virgen of Guadalupe's appearance to Juan Diego, and the Hispanic Community from my Church was putting on a reenactment of this at the Church Gym (what Annabelle likes to call the "church where you can talk and we have a Halloween party") and we went. There he was, in a row behind us this time, but still all alone, with no one sitting around him. He gave me a warm, familiar smile that I took to mean "oh there you are, I was wondering where you were and figured you had the baby. She is so beautiful, how is our other one taking to being a big sister? I bet you are a good big sister. I missed your singing during Church, Annabelle. Anyway, I am so glad you are back, I'll see you next week."

We walked out together and he held the door open for us and today for the first time we said good bye to each other.

Me and my Sunday husband, Marco.