here in my head

I’m sitting crosslegged on the couch, laptop warm on my legs, as I usually do early on weekday mornings. It would be more efficient to get up and get out of the house, quickly and off to work, but I’m finding it harder and harder to get going in the mornings, most mornings. I like this quiet space, with the only noises being the steady fall of artificial rain while Mike takes his shower and the quiet hum of the computer fan.

This morning I’m so ingrossed in what I’m reading that I don’t notice Mike get out of the shower, or realize that he’s dressed and hovering over me until he sneaks in to plant a peck on my cheek. I look up and he kisses me, long and slow and then starts kissing me with quick, little kisses, bobbing his head back and forth, pulling his lips away and then placing them back on mine in rapid fire succession until I start to laugh.

“There, that’s what I wanted. Your beautiful laugh and smile,” he says as he gives me one final kiss and turns to leave. “I love your smile.”

I haven’t stopped smiling since…

Tonight, I looked across the couch at my husband, typing away on his laptop. It had been one of those nights. We were both exhausted, Mike due to fighting a cold, and me from putting in enough overtime over the last seven days to get me four off in compensation someday in the future, once the latest crisis is averted. Three-quarters of the way through the movie we’d put on to accompany our Indian take out dinner, inspiration had struck and he started working on some code for work he’d been puzzling over earlier in the day. Watching him as he worked it struck me.

“This is not how I pictured my life,” I said, and he looked at me.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not at all who I imagined I’d marry.”

“Oh yeah? Who did you think you’d marry?”

“I figured I’d end up with an artist.”

“I’m an artist,” he said as he gestured to what was, to me, the incomprehensible gibberish on the screen.

“I meant some kind of tortured soul artist. Like a poet or something.”

“I write poetry.” There was a pause.

“Really?”

“Sure. Code is poetry.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is. Listen.” And then in his very best terrible Shakespearian actor voice: ‘Oh, line 36,123, why dost thou vex me so. Why must you send me these errors thus…”

Nope, he’s not a poet. But he does make me laugh…

*the title of today’s post is taken from the song of the same name by Canadian comedienne Nancy White, who shares a love of the poetry and genius of Leonard Cohen. And the song really does echo what I’m feeling today – that melancholy when you look back on how you thought life would be when you were younger vs where it is you’ve really ended up…
“And I had one of those flashes that hits you now and then
About experience manqué and certain sadly missing men.
And I realized in horror as I stroked my double chin,
Leonard Cohen’s never gonna bring my groceries in!”
I don’t have a copy of the song, and the album it’s from is sadly out of print. I was introduced to this song more than 10 years ago, when I had just turned twenty, and the song had very little relevance to my life. But it must of stuck with me somehow, because it popped into my head tonight as I was writing this post…