Sleeping In, Waking Up

I just finished Mimi Schwartz's collections of essays, Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed. Highly enjoyable as she considers moments of family surrounding her forty years of marriage. The idea of having forty years, and more, with Wesley gives me goosebumps. I'm not really a sappy, fluffy person, but I see a daily miracle when I look at my husband. I gave him a cold, keep him up all night with my coughing, groaning, bathroom breaks, and great pregnant abundance-- and this morning as I sweated and heaved on our recumbent exercise bike he looked up from his scriptures, stared at me and said, "You are the most beautiful woman ever."

The crazy part is that he believes that. Despite my nonstop jabbering and monologueing, despite my guilt complex (where everything is my fault from bad weather to untied shoelaces), despite my moodiness, he embraces me and thinks I'm amazing. He holds my enormous belly (yes, I'm huge now) and tells Charles how cute he is and how much cuter his mom is. Then I wonder, "How did this man ever fall in love with me? And how do I endure each day not right next to him?"

Schwartz is a morning person, her husband a night person. They've learned to work together and stop trying to change the other. So--she doesn't bang pans in the morning and he doesn't turn up the radio at night. I am a dark hours person who turns off in the middle of the day, and Wes just needs eight hours of sleep preferably before 7:30 a.m. The problem is when we see each other, regardless of how tired, we start talking and basking in our few awake moments together and we don't sleep as we should. We've decided that we would sleep worse apart, though.

Over a year ago I attended a literature conference and stayed away from Wesley for one night. I hated it. I growled, I sped home and clung to him for days. In less than two weeks he will go to Michigan for about 48 hours to present at a combustion conference; we doubt Charles will use that time to arrive, but we're both praying he doesn't, we're both wishing we could be together. According to Mimi Schwartz, our almost-two-year marriage is still in the "newlywed" category. She's right--but I don't think enough people know how fun and exhilarating and liberating and delightful marriage is or how it can improve every day. This is still not something I fully fathom.