All My Loving
Marriage was pretty cool. It maybe wasn't the idyllic Norman Rockwell painting that she had imagined in her earlier years; it was more so held true to all of the advice that Gwen had given her throughout the years. As it turned out, neither Mindy nor Danny really had the time to make a beautiful oven-roasted chicken for dinner every evening. A family of two obstetrician and gynecologists was time-consuming.
It was still cool, though. Mindy hadn't really liked giving up her beloved apartment when they'd married. Danny hadn't liked giving his up either, though he was significantly less attached to material items or spaces than Mindy. Danny was correct in his logic when he was convincing Mindy that they had to move: the two of them wanted children together and preferably sooner than later.
So, moving kind of sucked. Redecorating an apartment to compromise on Mindy and Danny's opposite esthetic tastes was a hilariously horrible two months of fabric samples and paint swatches. It worked out, though. Even before they had married, not long into their year and a half of dating, they'd figured out a groove of living together that worked for them. While Danny hadn't officially moved out of his place into Mindy's until two weeks before their wedding (horrible idea, Mindy soon found. Moving your fiancé and trying to nail down the last of a wedding was like, way too stressful), they'd still spent the majority of their nights together when their work schedules synced.
Both Danny and Mindy liked their own space. Mindy had always pegged herself for the type of girlfriend, fiancée, and wife that would be that totally cool chick who totally gave her husband space, didn't ask him to call her whenever he got somewhere, and totally let him go out with the guys, even if all she really wanted to do was cuddle in bed with him every single night and cook their way through The Art of French Cooking together.
Mindy soon realized that she actually was that cool chick and she did not have to pretend. Mindy loved Danny, but cuddling in bed together every single night? Yawn. What was actually practical in their relationship was that Danny was extremely easy going his encouragement of Mindy going out with her friends and that Mindy was respectful of Danny's preference to sit quietly in their living room, reading, watching the Discovery Channel, or sitting at the piano, pressing keys that only sort of sounded like music.
This was all good! Marriage ended up being hugely realistic and yeah, poop was eventually smelled and Mindy accidentally threw up a little bit on Danny's hand when he was holding her hair back when she had a horrible flu. They still got married and still were in love with one another and, much to both of their pre-marriage hopes about their marriage, still had extremely frequent sex.
.
Their son Jack was born shortly after their second wedding anniversary. As per the standards of manliness that he had outlined to Mindy years earlier in the doctor's lounge and again throughout their relationship, Danny totally killed it in the delivery room. He had brought books for Mindy to read, they talked, he facilitated guests in and out of the room based on Mindy's interest level and their secret code (scratching her neck meant that she had had enough of that person and it was time they go).
Danny didn't deliver the baby, mostly on their mutual agreement that that it was the twenty-first century and Mindy wasn't giving birth in a stable; they could use another doctor and Danny could just be the father and husband in this situation. So Danny was there the entire time, leaving the room only once on Mindy's demand that he pee because: "What the hell dude, you've been holding it for ten hours. The baby is not going to come in the two minutes that you're peeing."
Jack was not born in those two minutes. He was born (with an epidural) after an excruciating eighteen hour labour. Mindy wasn't one of those mothers that looked back fondly on her time in labour. Couldn't it just be that she loved her son and delivery sucked? Why couldn't those two things be mutually exclusive?
Danny was great. He really delivered on the role of the supportive husband and deliriously excited father. True to his word, Danny wiped the sweat from Mindy's forehead while she pushed, held her hand through bone-crunching contractions, and basically pushed her off the hospital bed after delivery to fawn over their son.
Danny's mother was irritatingly pacing around Mindy's recovery room with an extremely outdated film camera, taking flamboyant photos of the Lahiri-Castellano's with the world's brightest flash. Mindy was so glad when Rishi and her own parents were the next visitors, and the quiet snap of Rishi's iPhone camera didn't blind her, Jack, and Danny.
.
Parenthood was equally as cool as marriage. Jack was the single coolest child Mindy had never known. If ever she had had any sort of respect for the occasional wit of her godchild Riley, Jack doubled it. Jack could barely string together a sentence at two and a half, but dammit if he wasn't totally hilarious and awesome.
Mindy and Danny were serious first-time parents, but with the medical wisdom of two MD's. The first year of Jack's life felt surprisingly to Mindy like any sort of sitcom portrayal of childcare, except all the bodily fluids weren't edited out.
Maternity leave was kind of awesome. Having spent so little on their extremely small wedding a few years back (and being two successful OB-GYNs in New York), both Mindy and Danny had a sizeable amount of money saved, allowing Danny to scale back his hours at the practice enough not to jeopardize his career or the practice, but to allow him to be the extremely present father that he was.
Mindy totally expected this from Danny, and loved it. Though Danny was old-fashioned in his choice of coffee makers ("Why does it have to be this machine with the plastic cups? Let's just get a French press and be done with it." "Convenience, Danny. What if I want a single cup of caramel flavored coffee at four in the afternoon? Are you going to haul out the French press and brew it for me?") and entertainment (In the course of their relationship, Mindy had sat through the Godfather trilogy only once in Danny's biyearly viewing, and that was only very early on during their trip to Seneca Falls. Mindy had been thrilled to honor Elizabeth Cady Stanton and tour the National Women's Hall of Fame, though she felt that she perhaps owed Danny a little bit of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. It turned out, though, that Danny preferred the museums and enjoyed women's suffrage history more than he enjoyed Mindy's complaints during The Godfather) he was not old-fashioned in the way that he parented. Perhaps it was the trip to Seneca Falls that really changed him but Danny was all about equality in raising Jack.
Mindy and Danny both really relied on their considerate partnership in raising their child, which is why, when Jack was two and a half and mid potty training, she and Danny was so incredibly indecisive about the offer from the University of Texas for Danny to teach a two month practicum during the summer. It was an entry-level class for new medical students, but still, the offer was financially generous and hugely complimentary for his career.
Mindy and Danny's progress through deliberating this offer were as follows: initially, Danny, in all of his parental equality, couldn't fathom leaving his working wife and toddler son behind for two months to pursue a selfish means. Mindy had immediately qualified this opportunity not as selfish but as a well-deserved opportunity for a wonderful doctor.
This totally amicable conversation lasted an entire week before Danny slowly began to warm to the idea of a summer in Houston and Mindy quickly began hating it. Jack was nearly three, peeing constantly in his diaper or anywhere that was not his cool Spiderman potty, and having Danny around was seriously fundamental to their family's healthy function.
How was she going to manage June and July in the horrible heat of New York with urine all over her bathroom floor? Because, as Mindy found out, that was life with a child. Pee on the floor.
Mindy and Danny had numerous conversations on the subject, all of which contained bursts of outrage like this:
"You are leaving me and Jack to suffocate alone in New York? And if we get mugged going to daycare, you'll just be in Texas, shooting guns and living life?"
And:
"Oh right, because it is in a woman's nature to tend to the family and a man just gets to go out, advancing his career?"
"Mindy, don't do that. I'll stay."
"Oh well don't do me any favors, Danny. Don't turn it around like I don't want to be with Jack. I love Jack!"
She'd even suggested one tumultuous night that it was probably Mindy at Shulman and Associates that the U of T was really after, but, after seeing that she and Danny were both the partners of the practice and married with a child, that it was their sexist assumption that it was easier for Danny to leave for two months than Mindy. "I don't know why you want to go work for a bunch of sexist men. That's clearly discriminatory, Danny. I mean, come on. One look at the name Jack Lahiri-Castellano and you know that everyone assumes: 'Oh, another headstrong Indian woman in America. Gross. That is gross. And presumptuous."
"Mindy, you're the one being presumptuous."
"I'm fine, okay? I am just saying it as it is."
That particular evening had progressed to quite a heated debate on the subject of moving, with Mindy finally declaring, in a rage: "I don't know why you want to move to a state that has such institutionalized racism. I mean, sorry Confederacy, but the Union won. You have to deal."
These conversations were ultimately rooted in their mutual discomfort in spending so much time apart. Not in like, the overbearing couple way, or in the way that way that suggested that either Danny or Mindy had a very real fear of the other being unfaithful to their monogamous marriage. It was more of a disrupt of routine. They had a good thing going; marriage and family was like, a ton of work, but they had a routine that worked pretty consistently.
Mindy couldn't truly forbid Danny from going. She didn't want to. His going to Texas was not only a positive for Daniel Castellano as an individual and her betrothed, whom she supported, but it was also a positive for her medical practice. The exposure, experience, and networking would all contribute to their Manhattan office in a positive light.
Not going would be a crime, and Mindy did not want to be that woman who said: "Hey listen, I don't want you to go. Not because I think you'll lose interest in your family or because Texas will offer you brighter opportunities than you have here, but because I like having you around and your going kind of disrupts my routine a little bit. If you go, I have to figure out a new childcare plan for Jack and probably adjust my social schedule to be a single parent for sixty days. Plus, you won't be here, and like, next to Gwen on a good day, you're seriously by best pal and I like catching up on Breaking Bad with you at night."
Because those aren't really reasons. As Mindy had come to understand marriage, often the things that truly bother or irritate you are not considered worthy in the realm of spousal dispute. You always hear about really hot button items in popular female literature, never about the real things that matter. Mindy trusted that Danny loved her and his son, no matter what state he was living in. That wasn't the issue here. What was the issue was really just, like, trivial things that no book series ever covered.
Mindy realized that this was how she really realized that her marriage to Danny was a wonderful and healthy one. Before he left for Texas, Danny was incredible. He was always pretty awesome, only with small, sporadic moments of sucking or being a total loser. Mindy figured that she and him ran pretty even on their moment of shittiness.
But before he left for Texas, Danny really flaunted his kickass husband qualities. He bought groceries for the house for the next two weeks, re-writing a list of perishable food items that Mindy would have to re-purchase if she wanted Jack to grow up to be a healthy man with good eye sight. Danny refreshed Mindy on the intricacies of their air conditioning system and wrote down any numbers she would need in the case of a mechanical issue for the house.
Mindy and Danny had sex every single night for two weeks before he left, and Danny took Jack to the park, museum, and zoo in those same two weeks. Danny never went to bed early before he left. He stayed up with Mindy, participating at various interest levels in her activities. If they were having sex, he was totally interested. If Mindy was reviewing a patient file, Danny was maybe semi-interested, offering input if Mindy asked for it. When Mindy was reading Game of Thrones, Danny was totally absent, quietly lying in bed next to her, begging her not to have any sort of physical reaction to the information she gleaned from the book. They had just started watching Game of Thrones on Netflix a couple of weeks ago, and had vowed, as husband and wife, not to continue until Danny came home after Texas. Mindy cheated by reading the books; a rule that not specifically been outlined when they'd made their promise.
What really solidified Mindy's ruling that she was in a happy marriage was Danny's tedious project of making Mindy a mixed tape before he left. Really all it ended up being was a playlist titled 'For Mindy' on their shared iTunes account, but it was sweet none the less.
It was full of music that he said he downloaded on his own iPod and that, the time of day not really mattering, he'd listen to in Texas. This was the sort of romantic gesture Danny was into. Really quiet things that had yet to be portrayed in a film that starred Tom Hanks. Danny liked intimate portrayals of romance, like the playlist on the family account, that showed the enormity of his love in a really small, well-rounded way.
The day that Danny left for Texas, Mindy sat on the couch in the living room, downloading this playlist onto her iPod. She'd repeatedly asked Danny: "Why can't I just listen to it on the computer. Ugh, it's synchronizing. Oh my god. Danny, this is so annoying." But he insisted that the gesture wouldn't be fully realized unless Mindy also made the effort to put it onto her transportable device.
The playlist was all music that Danny loved. As she scrolled through it the afternoon before he left, Mindy told Danny: "This is so Elizabethtown of you." Mindy scrolled through the playlist, noting the artists. It was so much suited to Danny's tastes. "You know, this is so sweet Danny, but The Beatles? Really? I didn't listen to my first Beatles album until I was twenty four and even then I was like, meh."
Smiling, Danny finished packing his bags, placing them neatly at the door for him to pack into the cab to the airport. Jack was running around these bags, following Danny from the bedroom back to the front entrance of their apartment.
It was such a small little family moment, but it was nice. Mindy found this often in her marriage: little things turned out to be really, really nice. Rarely were there picturesque afternoons where her family really utilized the ice cream maker she'd bought. They'd never made banana ice cream as a family like she'd wanted, but watching her own son hop goofily from tile to tile on the floor, excitedly watching his father find last minute items to pack, Mindy was happy. These types of things were really more than enough. Gourmet ice cream didn't really count for much in the long run.
.
Saying an official goodbye to Danny sucked. Mindy felt as though they had already had the good, long tear-stained goodbye that she wanted, but that didn't stop her from hating seeing him go. She was nervous to be alone this summer; nervous to tackle parenting by herself.
The night before Danny left, he was quite upset with the timeline of his being gone. He insisted, meeting no refusal of Mindy's, that she and Jack come to Texas at the end of June. Danny did not want to be away from his own kid for more than a month. A week was too long, but two months? That was grossly over the limit of what a new parent could even deal with.
It probably had a lot to do with his own father's absence, but Danny was an extremely present dad. He downloaded Skype onto his cell phone a couple of days before he left, outlining clearly to Mindy that he was available any time, no matter what the staff at U of T said.
Danny's official goodbye consisted of a confused Jack kissing his dad goodbye, not totally understanding the longevity of his absence, and Danny and Mindy hugging tightly at the door. Turning out of the apartment door, Danny quickly swung back and handed Mindy an envelope.
Such a cool move.
Mindy held onto the envelope, watching Danny leave. He'd scrawled her name on the front and sealed the back.
She and Jack watched Danny exit the building, waving frantically as he did so. When he finally disappeared in the cab, Mindy set Jack down from his perch on the window, allowing him to run freely about the living room.
Mindy waited a few logical moments before opening the envelope. She had parenting duties to do. Jack needed lunch; so did she. Mindy made two turkey sandwiches, cutting Jack's into tiny portions, and put both of the plates on the coffee table in the living room.
Jack sat quietly eating his sandwich. Mindy reached for her laptop and opened iTunes. While the program loaded, she tore open the back of the envelope.
Years into their marriage, the son of a bitch was still doing things like this: on an unlined piece of paper, Danny wrote "Listen to song number one. You're going to like it, just try it. I love you two. I'll write tomorrow."
Mindy smiled at Danny's ability to predict her hesitancy in trusting his taste but also at his adorably nostalgic insistent that he write to her every day. Mindy loved this and Danny knew it; Danny loved classic expressions of affection. Mindy opened track number one on the playlist, letting The Beatles' "All My Loving" fill her living room.
Dammit being married to Danny could be really, really nice sometimes.
All my loving, I will send to you.