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Things She Knows

You learn a lot of things if you watch. Not just look, but watch. I know, for instance, that he presses the snooze button three times in the morning. The first time because he just doesn't want to wake up. The second, because 10 more minutes won't hurt. The third, just because he doesn't want to get out from under the blankets. And I know that he sets the alarm early so that he can do all that and not be late. I know that he drinks two cups of coffee in the morning. One here, milk and sugar, to wake him up; one on the Mothership, black, for show.

He plucks between his eyebrows, I can tell when we're really close. He does have Machiavelli on his bookshelf, but he also has Bronte and Esquivel.

I know what the ring on his pinky is, and I know that he won't ever take it off. But I also know that it's my name that he whispers at night when he's restless and I cuddle closer to him. He doesn't like taking the bus, the press of people all around him, so he drives wherever he can't walk or takes a shuttle. He drives a standard, likes changing the gears. 'A real man' my mother would have called him.

I know that some nights, he sleeps like a baby and some nights he doesn't; and I know not to push him to rest those nights. Those are the nights that I know he forgets where he is and pretends that he doesn't want to be comforted. So I make him coffee, sweet and milky--not creamy, he doesn't like the fuzzy cream-mouth feeling--and go sit next to him. He drinks the coffee while I doze with my head on his lap and sometime during the night he carries me back to the bed and lies with me while I sleep. I'm perfectly fine on the couch and so is he, so I know that the only reason for moving us is so that he can hit the snooze three times.

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