Silly Woman

This morning, the alarm went off on the opposite side of my bed and I lie there and listened as someone else slapped the snooze button. Beside me, the lanky body of my four year old son lay sprawled out between us, legs strewn across Banks, arm tucked beneath my forehead. I watched the stillness for a while, the rise and fall of breathing in these two bodies beside me, the great distance between who and where I am today and who and where I was two years ago.

It was quiet in the room, the only sounds coming from the rattling ceiling fan and the pattering rain outside, until the alarm buzzed again and I felt the far away stirring of Banks as he moved into awake. I watched him stretch, carefully avoiding J’s sleepy limbs, and then watched as he picked up his cell phone. He had to try twice or maybe three times to enter his lock code and I almost laughed, feeling how tired he must be. I saw him scroll through emails and daily news as he tried to motivate himself out of bed and then I watched as he opened and immediately deleted a text.

All my old fears came rushing back and I spoke, keeping my voice light.

“Who was that?” I asked, a quiver in my voice, a tensing in my muscles. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe I thought he’d snap at me for asking. Maybe I thought he’d hedge and run circles around whatever it was on the other end of his phone. Whatever I expected, it was not what I got.

“Silly woman,” he replied with a laugh and a smile in my direction. “I get a text when my rent check clears my bank.”

His half-asleep eyes hugged me close over the sleeping frame of my child, and there in his face I could see the truth. I smiled. He smiled. And he got up to face his day. He didn’t judge me for asking, didn’t roll his eyes or berate me for not having faith in him. He just answered. Truthfully.

“Silly woman,” he echoed with a grin, and I knew it was true. I knew then, without a shred of doubt, that this was it. This moment, me lying in bed next to my sleeping child, him standing with a stretch and smile on the other side of the room, ready to drive over an hour to work and not even complaining about the midnight visit and subsequent bed stealing from my child… this was the moment when everything became blissfully real. I have come full circle. I have learned to trust again… and to trust not just anyone, but him.

It seems that yes… he is my person… my penguin, if you will.

For better or worse, whether he likes it or not, he has become entwined in my heart and life and I am a silly, silly woman for not realizing sooner that there couldn’t be anyone else… not for me… not for him.

I smoothed my hair back from my face and settled back into light sleep, smiling into the pillow.

Silly woman, I told myself, holding in laughter. Silly, happy, ridiculous woman.