It happened last night. I was sleeping, tucked up next to you in the chilly air. A cleansing breeze was blowing in the window, blowing out the heat, and it seems to me, blowing out the oppression of worry and strife.

The moonlight streamed in, parting the night with a silvery blade of clarity. The lace curtains breathed with the wind,.............puffing out, then pulling back. That glowing yet subtle light fell across your sleeping face, and I laid there, turned to you, watching you sleep.

You slept the sleep of the young............your lips slightly parted and your brow unfurrowed. You had your hand overhead and your fingers were relaxed and open. I lay there, wondering what you were dreaming, or if you were dreaming, thinking how wonderful it would be to see another's dreams. (or maybe not)

Lying there with my Paddington bear flannel sheet wrapped around me, watching you and watching the pattern of a summer breeze, I almost lost myself in wondering about times past, and people past. I wondered if thousands and millions of women who went before me laid awake at night, taking strength simply from a change in the weather.

I felt young, and yet ancient, a part of some ageless history, some very quiet untelling of truths, thousands of people lying in secret, entertaining themselves by the whiff of the wind, and the scent of rose petals on the air....a yearning to go back, or at least a yearning to share this feeling with someone they love. I felt transformed......................transformed by a cool breeze, and it made me remember a different time............a younger time.

Remembering a time when each morning was ripe with new possibilities, and like each day was a gift wrapped package, waiting to be opened by greedy fingers. Those times,.....there was no thought, no reflection on what the day meant, or what it could be, but rather, just what it was....and what it was.... was immediacy. Too much life and events and activities to stop and think about them. I wonder if that is the only difference between then and now..................that wizened tendency to meditate and contemplate on the events of an everyday life. I am thinking that is what makes me tired so much. Perhaps I think too much, and enjoy too little. Or perhaps it is simply because I know now that all of life's beauty and passion is really in the details. I WANT to think about them. I want to wallow in them, bathe in them, and capture them to remember when I am a very old woman.

But I digress..........

As I laid there, watching you, thinking of all the time we have slept together, just like this, you and me, I remember all of the life we have shared. Not the moments of daytime, shared with the world and shared with our family and our friends and our co-workers, but the moments spent in the darkness, in the night........those quiet times that have formed the knot that is us.

Nights that we spent awake, all night long, playing and giggling and discovering the child in each other, .......nights of romance and passion that made me feel like a heroine in some romance novel. Nights and nights of gentle companionship, whispering thoughts and fears and hopes and dreams to each other, maybe afraid to voice them in the light of day. We've had nights of holding onto each other, when words were not enough to express the pain that life was bringing us and we held on because there was nothing left to do, and nights of shared ecstasy when we've celebrated some small victory for our children. Yes, my love, there have been nights of feeding sleep, nourishing, to begin anew in the morning, and nights of deep petulant insomnia,...nights of "Are you awake? You are, too?" Nights when it seems the only sound was the retching or crying of a sick child and the toilet flushing and the washing machine filling and spinning, filling and spinning. There are the nights of fitful sleep (and many of them) when some little boy (mostly) or girl slept between us, completely unaware of anything except the warm comfort of two stable adults beside them. There are those nights when the intensity of our thoughts kept us awake, thinking, thinking,...........like the cogs of a machine, going all night long. And yes, even a few nights, spent back to back, when our stubborn hearts were slow to forgive and even slower to admit we were wrong.

All of these nights have twisted and shaped us, bent us and molded us into the bundle of parents and people and lovers we are now, strong and unbreakable, a tangle of all of life's details rolled into one.

You, my beloved husband, are my rock. You are my dearest and best friend, my ardorous lover. You are my confidante, my muse and my jester. Without you, I am like a coconut.....sweet and nourishing inside, but only if someone can get to it. With you in my life, I am pure and sweet and sometimes a bit spicy, filled with the milk of sunshine and rain and of life. I love you.

And as I laid there, watching the light move across your face, and I took your fingers in mine and kissed each of them and gently laid them over my heart. And I said a little prayer for you. and I thanked God that you were you and that you were mine, and then I slept.