We Still Climb

Today, I wake up with great pride in my husband and children.

Robert and I spent one of our first dates climbing up Pinnacle Mountain with Subway in our backpacks. I had no idea then that he would be my husband, and those hikes we continued to take together were a foreshadowing of the future we were building in tandem.

Recently, we decided to gut our entire backyard deck and pool area.

It started because Robert said we needed a new pool liner. And if we were going to replace the liner, we needed to replace the skimmer. And if we were going to replace the skimmer, he would like to add another one to make maintaining the pool easier.

That led to tearing out the gravel around the pool and putting in concrete.

Then that idea expanded to the wooden deck.

Eventually, we had a whole new slab of concrete designed.

We got numerous quotes for an outdoor kitchen, but they were ridiculously high. Then we finally got one reasonable quote, and the contractor sent us a picture of what we would get for that price.

It was so small that Robert and I laughed.

We clearly could not afford what we were looking for.

Eventually, Robert and I ran across a company called Cornerstone that sold backyard kitchen kits.

They have many to choose from here.

I was immediately thinking, This is going to be so easy. We can do this.

Robert was immediately thinking, This is crazy. I don’t know if we should do this.

We kind of have this thing in our marriage.

When I first met Robert, as smart and skilled as he is, he wouldn’t even do little things for me, like build a recipe box or make small wooden projects. It wasn’t because he didn’t love me or because he didn’t feel like doing them.

It was because he simply lacked the confidence to think he could do them.

And do them well.

But I was looking at these plans thinking, This looks just like sewing plans. We just stack these little bricks like they tell us.

We can do this.

Turns out, we were both wrong.

It was not easy.

But we could do it.

The first surprise came when the owner of the company called and told us that the first of our two shipments was coming.

Nine pallets of block.

I think Robert’s anxiety immediately spiked because he was thinking, How am I going to fit all of those in the garage?

I am pretty practical, and I also look for ways to cut corners, so I was immediately like, “These bricks are going toward an outdoor kitchen. They can literally live outdoors.”

Problem solved.

Except then the delivery people offered to use a forklift to take the pallets up to the garage. It took everything Robert—who is very strong—the delivery man, and our son had just to help get the forklift up our driveway.

And that was when we began to understand exactly what we had gotten ourselves into.

Those blocks now had to make it completely around our property and into the backyard, where the construction was going to take place. They also needed to get close enough to the concrete pad that building with them wouldn’t be entirely impossible.

So we started moving them.

Eventually, we moved all of them.

About 25,000 pounds of concrete blocks.

Each one weighed around 40 to 50 pounds.

We moved them one at a time.

I wrote about that here.

And then we had to build with them.

We wanted the whole kitchen finished by the Fourth of July, but we had a problem: our concrete needed time to cure.

So on day 14, I suggested that we start with one row.

Then another layer.

Then another.

Once we finished that, we moved on to the next thing.

Robert did a lot of the first and second structures by himself, but then we got to the fireplace.

It was much bigger.

And I knew I needed to jump in.

So we did it together.

And we worked.

Night after night, we would start when Robert got home from work and keep going until 10:00 or 11:00 at night. Then we would feed our family whatever restaurant was still open.

And then we would get up and do it again.

We were exhausted.

We were sore.

We were working in 100-degree heat.

We both lost weight during the process.

Then one night, I woke up around 3:00 in the morning and realized Robert wasn’t beside me.

I thought for sure he had gone to check on the pool. He had been having anxiety about it, so I figured he had gone to check the liner and would be right back.

I waited for him to come back.

I tried to fall asleep, but I couldn’t.

Before I knew it, it was 5:00 in the morning, and Robert came through our bedroom door to get ready for work.

He had been on the couch the whole time.

He was in so much muscle pain that his arms were going numb.

Mine were too.

We did eventually discover that if you prop yourself up on a cushion instead of lying flat, it helps with some of the numbness. A helpful tip, I suppose, if you ever decide to move and stack 25,000 pounds of concrete blocks.

Anyway, Robert crawled into bed just to sit with me.

We were both thinking about how much work we had already done.

How much work we still had left.

How sore we were.

Then Robert pulled up his fitness ring app.

He had slept for 29 minutes.

Twenty-nine minutes.

And I just started sobbing.

How much could we put on each other?

How much could we put on him?

He still had to go to work.

I’ve learned recently that I have an anxious attachment, and I don’t like rupture. I don’t like unpredictability. And this felt unpredictable to me because my husband was about to go to work on 29 minutes of sleep.

I immediately started feeling all the things I knew he was going to feel—the queasiness I get when I don’t sleep, the irritability, the exhaustion.

I think that is just the empath in me. I hurt deeply when I love somebody, and I can feel almost anyone’s pain.

It’s the weirdest thing.

Robert told me not to cry.

He told me he was going to be fine.

And then he went to work.

I cried for about 30 minutes after he left until I finally cried myself back to sleep.

When I woke up, I felt okay.

But I was determined to get us to bed early that night.

Those were some of the hard moments we went through to make this happen.

But through the whole thing, I learned how ridiculously strong Robert is.

I don’t think I ever fully realized his strength.

He continues to amaze me every day, and one thing is for sure: I will never again be surprised when he surprises me with something new he can do.

We worked.

We stacked block after block after block.

We built a ten-foot-tall fireplace.

An island.

A kitchen and grill area.

It was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I have ever done.

And while we built it together, Robert was the backbone of the whole thing.

He made sure everything was level. He had to learn how to use mortar because the adhesive that came with the kit was only useful if you already had a level surface.

Our concrete, as concrete almost always is, was slightly unlevel.

So Robert had to mortar it.

He was nervous about that because, like I said, he doesn’t like to do anything unless he can do it with perfection and precision.

Then he learned that he was skilled at that too.

And we just kept working.

Night after night.

Round after round.

Block after block.

And it reminded me of the first time we climbed Pinnacle Mountain together.

We climbed because we wanted to get to the top.

That is what this was too.

We were climbing because we wanted an outdoor kitchen that was affordable to us.

We climbed through 25,000 pounds of blocks.

Through 100-degree heat.

Through sore muscles and numb arms.

Through 29 minutes of sleep.

Through mortar and measurements and making sure everything was level.

We kept climbing.

And somewhere along the way, our children started climbing with us.

They carried blocks.

They worked beside us.

They watched their dad learn how to do something he had never done before.

They watched their mom look at something enormous and say, We can do this.

And then they watched us do it.

Robert and I spent one of our first dates climbing a mountain together with Subway in our backpacks.

I had no idea then that I would marry him.

I had no idea that we would build a life together.

I had no idea that, years later, we would stand in our backyard with four children, surrounded by thousands of pounds of concrete blocks, building something that once seemed completely beyond us.

But I think those early hikes were a foreshadowing of the future we were building in tandem.

Because we like doing hard things together.

And I think that is what marriage is.

Every day, doing hard things.

Sometimes carrying more than you think you can carry.

Sometimes looking at the person beside you and realizing you never fully understood how strong they were.

Sometimes climbing when you are tired.

Sometimes climbing when you are sore.

Sometimes climbing when you have no idea how much farther you have to go.

But continuing to climb because you want to see what is waiting at the top.

And today, when I look at what we built, I am ridiculously proud.

Not just of the fireplace.

Not just of the kitchen.

Not just of the 25,000 pounds of concrete blocks that somehow made their way from our driveway, around our property, and into something that will probably outlive us.

I am proud of my husband.

I am proud of my children.

I am proud of us.

All these years later, we still climb.

And now our children climb with us.

And probably the most daunting idea is that what we’ve built in our backyard will outlive us, just like what we built in marriage.