Song of Solomon

I can't type much today. My brain feels like it's hooked up to a car battery, on overload. I'm so full... so full.

B's still feeling punky. After he got home from shopping, he retreated out into the garage again, and I was left to rattle round the house like a lonely ball bearing in a big old boxcar. The kids were occupied, the dogs were asleep, I didn't feel like writing, and there was no one online to talk to. I went out to make dinner and he still didn't emerge, even as I rattled in the kitchen on the other side of the door. Thinking he was perhaps feeling worse, I popped a head through the door. No, just buried in his sudoku, his beautiful brow creased in concentration. God, the little hairs at the nape of his neck are grown longer now, softly curling. They undo me.

I just stood looking at him until he looked up, concern coloring those beautiful eyes, the color of a summer sky. Bloodshot today again, my 'mother's mind' spoke up; he's running a fever again. We take his temp and I am still at a loss for words. "What, honey?" he asks.

"I'm lonely." I don't mean to say it but it slips out.

He comes to me and lies his head on my shoulder. I'm still standing on the step, so his head falls so perfectly into place, there in that soft place on the crest of my chest. I breathe him, his soft curls brushing the cheek I lay against his crown. "I'm so sorry you don't feel good again." I whisper. We stay like that for a long time.

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Later it's time for another Vicodin. The pain is getting worse. I'm on the phone, solidifying family Christmas plans when my cell phone alerts a text message from the other room. "I'm lonely." When I take him his pill and some comfort I see that he's pinched around the eyes. I know he's off for bed soon.

I turn the mattress pad on so it will be warm when he gets in and go out to check my email one last time. Ah, someone familiar! His daughter, so far away, has been on the bulletin board, leaving a lonely message of frozen pipes and a bad day, seeking comfort. I take the laptop out to show him where he stands taking one last cigarette. He smiles after he reads it and pulls out his cell to call her. He looks a little perkier; the call and the Vicodin flowing through his veins to soothe his soul.

I post her a funny little message of encouragement, thinking about how lonely and frightening it must be to be out there in the big old world so many states away with no one but your boyfriend to call when the pipes freeze and you are sick and in pain and snowed in and helpless. I can offer only my humor and what flows through these pixels across all those state lines; me: a relative stranger, a strange relative.... but someone who understands. I can only stretch out my hand. It's so new for all of us. He treasures her; I want to be her friend.

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He comes to bed smiling. "You made her giggle," he says as I get ready for bed.

I grin back. "I'm so glad."

With a groan he pulls me close, holds me tight, face buried like a child. "I love you so much." His voice is muffled. And it is one of those nights, one of those times when being close to him is like being an iron man next to an electromagnet. We cannot pull away, not for all the world. There is nothing but each other, nothing but this ocean of us that we sink into. An amnion of peace.

"This is our safe place," he repeats my mantra from the Hospital Day, when we'd sunk into a huddled embrace, waiting for some word from above. It will become our phrase; it hangs like a sugarplum between us, so right. "This is our safe place."

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We awake as we slept, entwined; two halves of eternity. I can feel his skin hot on mine as soon as I wake. It will be time for another doctor today. Will we finally get answers?

Today, I am full. I had no idea there was such a thing as this love, this thing that still simmers beneath the surface of illness and chores and work and kids and all of the inconsequential things that mark the daily progress of life. I am gravid with it, all of the time. And my heart sings....