Tuesday's Wee Hours
The rambling of a sleepless sailing woman
My stomach is tenderly knotted. After the prolonged dinner and two rich desserts, oh and the 'classical station'; Ave Maria in particular, we immediately retired. The ship was chopping along it's watery way.
The wooden coat hangers in the closet relentlessly banged like a newlywed couple in their berth through the thin common wall.
Again my stomach knotted ,not with ocean distress but some deep uncivilized fear, of drowning perhaps.
And I remember the twinkly bright lit eyes of the gentle Irishman Patrick at lunch. How the eyes of his soul sought me in sympathy. His insistent and vulgarly obnoxious wife, insecure and over educated, billowing on about his weight loss, ignoring Him, as if he were an infant in a car seat.
Those eyes, that poor sweet man whose eyes betrayed the clink of champagne glasses celebrating forty years of marriage and five grown children all graduates of 'GW'. Those pleading eyes haunted me though the sea miles of restless sleep.
My aching gut clenching telepathically as we motored through the trough of sea.
She pauses in her deadly prolonged prattle eyeing his champagne. "Have you had enough?," She cloys covetously. He looks uncomfortable, helpless really.
"No!" I blurt, rescuing him. We all laugh. I sense his gratitude. (Bully.)
"Its gripping again" i say to Dan.
he draws me tightly to himself.
I press my small mouth into the soft cleft above his armpit, rooting for a window, a modicum of breathing space for my tiny nose, remembering being held protectedly as a small girl into my mother's body. Safe. And i realize for the first time, i am his child. His 'susan joy'. We are happy.
The tiny glaring thread that binds us (we four) is we are the children in our two life stories. Somehow grown, somehow by grace finding happily marriedness that mutually satisfy all givers.
The nagging coat hangers harangue.
"My tummy hurts" i whisper soft and urgently.
"Would you like some water?"
"No". . . A contentment I feel.
And i stifle a giggle. His thick fingers drape possessively around me. I feel loved.
The ship ambles on through the watery night though my belly resists rest.
Laying awake, my small hands cradle the two halves of my face, forearms pressing together beneath my chin like a praying mantis.
Often my husband's eyes full of mirth will chirp playfully in a manly version of mock Julia Child, "cont-text?"
What he is kindly pleading is 'where in the world have you flown off to now my little canary?"
Rolling onto my belly, i am one with the ship as she surges. stammers. stutters and shutters, probing the early light.
Sleep please come to soothe me as it does my sweet slumbering love. Soothe me with your snoring coo.
Then by coincidence, or not, the truth arises. His sweet breath is what frightens me. The knowing without knowing again. Each breath holds it's own Truth.
