It’s 7:30 in the evening here. The house is quiet tonight, despite the dogs, the kid, the man. The man, it happens, is already sound asleep in bed as I sit downstairs writing this.
His wake-up call is 3am, and christ that’s a hard time to drag ass out of bed when it’s the dead cold dark heart of winter. Lately he’s been walking to work because of the ice too, since motorcycles can be a bit sketchy when roads get slick. I can’t even imagine it – any of it – honestly. Every morning I hear his alarm go off in the hazy pitch black and nuzzle my head deeper into the warm fluff of my pillow in response. There’s not enough money in the world, my brain mutters to itself, drifting in a semi-conscious fog. Before he leaves, I feel his breath blast hot on my cheek for a second, then the graze of his lips. I grunt once softly in response, and then he’s gone.
This afternoon he strolled in with a loaf of brioche thick as Popeye’s arm. Before that there was rosemary-scented focaccia marbled with swirls of onion. He brags about his buttercream and pastries and the metric tons of sugar and butter his bakery consumes.
(Needless to say, his job is not helping my diet.)
The odd hours are hard, yes, but he loves it – the baking not the early rising, mind you. And when you get right down to it, we should all be so lucky. To be able to do something you truly love, even as the economy spirals out into what seems more and more like a depression, and as so many can’t find any work at all. I count us among the more fortunate, in every conceivable way. And so every night spent alone I still count my blessings and thank my lucky stars, even as I climb into my cold side of the bed and kiss the already-dreaming forehead of the snoring Baker man beside me.
