Sometimes, it is necessary to remember love, and cherish it.

FINALLY, ONE MORNING, WE FOUND OURSELVES IN BED


Most of the time anymore, we don’t sleep together. I have to admit I started it. She began getting the night sweats and every time she’d get one she’d throw the covers off. I mean all the way off her whole body and part of mine too. If that didn’t wake me up, the way she flung her arms and legs out did. Five, six, seven times a night, I couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep for months.

Some guys wouldn’t mind I guess, but I have to get my eight hours or I’m no good at work. I slept in the guestroom for a while, but I missed her breathing next to me. You sleep next to a person for thirty or forty years, you get the habit.

So I go back to the marital bed but I guess not getting enough sleep was getting to her too. Marge and me grew up in the same neighborhood in east LA and I’ve watched her go through a ton of changes. I don’t think I’ve seen her this cranky since she went through puberty. Her skin is sensitive, her nerves are sensitive, she can’t stand being touched at night, won’t even let the dog up on the bed anymore.

Well, I told her I’m not going back to the guest room again, and she told me she sure as hell wasn’t going to give up her own damn bedroom so we compromised on separate beds. But we had to downsize to twins because two kings wouldn’t fit in the room.

That was okay for a year or so until she started yelling at me every night to quit snoring it was keeping her awake. “I don’t snore,” I told her. “It must be you.” And we argued that one back and forth until she bought a little sound activated tape recorder and got proof. No way could those big deep snores have been coming out of her. So back to the guestroom for me and it’s pretty much permanent now. The sleep clinic got me a machine that helps with the snoring but makes so much noise of its own I have to wear earplugs to cancel it out.

She’s still got night sweats and now I’ve got this machine, we’re more like roommates at either end of the house than man and wife.

Last month we got into this big fight over nothing really, but you know how it is. One person says one thing and the other person says another and the next thing you know it’s World War Three and no graceful way out for anybody. We went to our separate beds, both of us still mad as hornets.

But about four am I found myself back in our old bedroom kneeling next to her side of the bed, crying and missing her so much I couldn’t stand it. She woke up, saw me crying there, and this time when she threw back the covers it was to invite me in.

Finally, that morning, we found ourselves in bed together and I think she needed it as much as I did. We still can’t sleep together every night because of our individual problems, but we talked about it and settled on a pretty good compromise. We made a deal that once a week or so we would spend the night together. And she says it’s worth listening to me snore for one night to cuddle again. I feel the same.

It’s kind of romantic really, knowing that we’ve got that one night coming up. Like when we were dating, only better.