As part of the WORTH THE WEIGHT blog tour, I feature guest author, Eileen Palma, and her thoughts on writing everlasting love.
***
The Good Wife
I was single before you could let a
computer find your soul mate on eHarmony.
Before you could change your relationship status on Facebook. Before you could snap date-night selfies with
your phone. I’m sure you must think I’m
a senior citizen, but actually I was practically a child bride by today’s
standards.
I married my college sweetheart two
weeks after graduation. My husband Doug
and I started dating when I was twenty, which took me off the dating market for
all of my twenties and what is now left of my thirties. My un-married dating life ended with five
dollar all you can eat pizza buffets, and rented VHS tapes from Blockbuster.
Apparently I wasn’t paying
attention the day that the writing teacher said, “Write what you know.” Because I have no clue what it’s like to be
living on the Lower West Side and single in your thirties like Jack and Kate
from my rom-com Worth the Weight. But, J.K. Rowling didn’t know what it was
like to be a ten-year old boy wizard, and Stephanie Meyer had no idea what it was
like to be a hundred-year-old vampire and I’m pretty certain that E. L. James
doesn’t know half as much about bondage as Christian Grey.
I may not know anything about the
single life, but one thing I do know about is love; the kind of unconditional
love that movies are made out of. That
guy from The Notebook has nothing on
my husband. When he agreed to support me in sickness and in health he had no
idea what he was getting into.
Three years after our wedding,
while Doug was still in vet school, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named
Molly. Hours after the C-section, my
body ballooned with fluid, my blood clotted uncontrollably, my liver enzymes
were through the roof and my blood pressure was so high I needed to be on an IV
drip of Magnesium to prevent seizures. I
had developed a life threatening autoimmune condition that affects pregnant
women called HELLP Syndrome. For seven
days and seven nights, Doug didn’t leave my side. The nurses took pity on him and gave him a
pair of scrubs so he would have a change of clothes. The only food I remember him eating were the leftovers
from my food tray.
When we finally went home from the
hospital, it became clear pretty quickly that while I was out of the woods, I
would be plagued with health problems for the rest of my life. When mothers complain about all those late
night feedings they had to tackle while their husbands slept, I think about how
Doug woke up every single time to feed Molly so I could rest and get my health
back. He spent many a night reading
aloud from veterinary textbooks while rocking Molly to sleep.
 |
| Eileen Palma |
I may not
know much about being single in 2014, but I know enough about love to fill
volumes of books.
About the Author: Eileen Palma has an English degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and has studied Advanced Novel Writing at Sarah Lawrence College’s The Writing Institute. Her writing has appeared in The Momoir Project, Macaroni Kid Bronxville, Patricia Dunn's author blog, Blogging in the Big Apple, PTO Today and on the front page of Our Town.
As a participant, I was given a complimentary copy of this book. My review for WORTH THE WEIGHT will be featured next!
Find out more about this author at http://www.eileenpalmaauthor.com/
Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble
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