She Gets Me. I Get Her.
I’m not ready to spend less time with her again
She falls asleep before me. Always. Her breathing shifts and slows and deepens. Little jerks and twitches. It’s dark as pitch here. Outlines of things and slivers of light. The weather warms and clouds disperse as night opens. My vision dims and my ears become nocturnal hunters for sound. Her breath there. The popping of the house as humidity burrows in for the summer. Tiny wisps of wind whip through the waxy leaves of tall grass just outside the window.
Minutes before we were laughing.
We lay in bed and talk about today and tomorrow and highlights and conversations and worries. We pull out phones and watch turtle mating videos as we try to figure how we got on the topic of turtle mating. The size of a turtle penis. How it correlates to their longevity. If it does. My new spirit animal. Tears of laughter as we stare into the throat of a moaning turtle atop a stoic female. The glow of the tiny screen galvanizing us in a moment.
One of many moments shared before falling asleep. Her before me. Laughter before sleep. And hers is the best.
We’re strange together, she and I. The things we talk about. The faces we make. The way I make fun of her making fun of me making fun of her. The Seinfeldian nuanced discussions about what’s going on under masks, what a mustache smells like, or why we always let Drake play when we’re in the car. “Drake makes hits, period babe.”
We sit on the front porch in the sun in the morning after the kids are at school. Tea for her. Coffee for me. Two people watching cars. The same cars that echo by as we lay in bed. We should really put some trees by the road. “That doesn’t work.” Phones out for the Google race. We never had these opportunities before. I was always gone.
We were always tired. For different reasons than now. We’re more in control now. Of our fatigue. The choices for shorting sleep. The opportunities to accumulate moments that won’t foster regret as we age and the crow’s feet come together in a squint wondering where the time went.
I like making her matcha latte at noon. Powder. Water. It’s therapeutic to care for her in small ways. Whisk. I labor over how much monk fruit sweetener she likes, the way I foam milk. The moment she takes the first sip and says, “mmmm, that’s gooood.” And follows it up with bizarre slurpy sounds. Foam on her upper lip. I’ve always loved her lips and the way they move. I marvel still at how soft they are. She’s smiling with all of her.
I think about our marriage. The breadth and depth. It’s possible to be saddened by how much time we’ve spent apart. For long stretches, we worked long hours, had long commutes, worked several jobs, and only convened for brief pockets in the evening. We spent a summer apart as she moved to California before I did.
She slept on the bottom bunk of a children’s playroom. I lived in a friend’s vacant apartment on the south side of Chicago. We had a dog then. We were so far apart. We did what we had to do to get to the coast.
I owned a business and was out the door before she was awake. I would come home minutes before the kids’ bedtime. I took time for granted. I was moving at a pace with an ideal that someday the pace would slow and we would have more time together. But, so much time had been spent already.
Our days have coalesced into tiptoe bump into each other waking joy moments. I’m home. She’s home. For a spell, they were home but now, they’re in school and it’s us. We share so much now.
I do miss catching up at the end of the day. Absence may not necessarily make the heart grow fonder but the suspense nervous build-up of seeing her after a day away is still familiar. The lingering feeling memory of times when I was forced to wait it out. Even now, with unfettered access to her, I find myself staying away from her office to give her space. Us space. Letting it build.
It’s the control I like. Over time. Over the schedule. Living without the dread of stretches. I’m still so in love with her. She loves me too. It’s simple that way. And this life is so much richer with her in it. Our relationship isn’t normal. It’s uniquely ours. The life we were living before the lockdown wasn’t normal but it was uniquely ours. And now, this new life isn’t normal but it feels that way and it too, is uniquely ours.
I’m closest to me when it’s just us. And for the last year, we’ve grown closer. No barriers. Less excuse me’s and more I love you’s. No shame. No judgment. Just people. Together.
She sits on the back steps as the sun has moved across the sky. Sipping water eyes closed upward-facing and warming until she’s off to pull weeds and hold the leaves of plants between her fingers. The way her feet scuff the helicopters as she walks through the grass. The aching squeak of the spigot. The whoosh of water and the spatter on mulch and sedum. I’ve had more time to appreciate how much she cares for things. Her intentional tenderness.
Our life has always been different. What I mean is different from anyone else’s life as it’s unique to us as the only two ingredients in this love. From coasts to apartments to houses. Fast and slow. Ebbs and flows. This year zoomed in. It feels right to be myopic about the most important person in my life. She’s still here. And so am I. I’ve been alone. Those feelings resurface at times even in a house of four people and little silence.
She sees me struggle. With life. With myself. With our children at times. And still no judgment. Just a look. A glance. A solitary sentence subdued with subtext that gives me the encrypted advice I need without shaming me in front of them. She’s subtle. She gets me.
I see her push herself. In life. Career. She’s grounded. She’s wise. I try to give advice she doesn’t need. I try. That’s the love talking.
She’s away for the day and the house is still. Her hair was wet and her smell hung in the bathroom after she left. A fresh dampness. She’ll be home later. I look forward to catching up and hearing about her day. I get her.