Yesterday morning I was feeling under the weather, and it being a Saturday, I decided to stay in bed instead of getting up. Alex came home from work, ate and did whatever on the computer, and then joined me in our bed. One of the hardest things for me is with him working graveyard shift, I miss the nighttime snuggles. As he cuddled in beside me I at first whimpered because he was throwing off my intricate blanket system that I need to keep me warm. Our bedroom is upstairs and whoever converted the attic didn’t put in any heat vents. It gets a touch cold in the winter time.
After he had settled down I said, “Hey, we could spoon!”
“Oh we could, could we?” came his reply.
I eagerly backed toward him and wiggled up against him. After a few seconds I noted that something was missing from our spoon, and that it was indeed, half a spoon. He told me that he had just coated his hands with oil because they were getting dry and cracked. I mentioned those cotton gloves you can wear to bed after you had coated your hands with something. My hands used to crack and bleed when I was working as a baker because of the constant hand washing and the exposure to so many temperatures.
I enjoyed the moment beside him, remembering when we first lived together we used to spoon all the time in the mornings. We both usually selected jobs that were either on the swing or the graveyard shifts, and so in the pre-kid days hours in the mornings were often spent spooning and cuddling and making love.
Then came Nathan and three years later Polly. Our mornings were soon filled with feedings and diapers and kids who got into our bed in the middle of the night. Mornings often brought crying and fighting over cartoons, cereal spilled all over the floor from attempts made in vain to pour one’s own, soon met with milk splashed on top of it.
I can certainly only speak for myself but I’d say it’s not that the love and passion have subsided since those mornings filled with hours of love years ago. The time was filled with love of a different kind, and we became older and more tired as the responsibilities added up. As Alex’s breath turned to a light snore, I wrapped my legs around him and reveled in the warmth and beauty of the moment.