Christmas eve morning
Today was foggy and grey, and the morning light struggled to peak into the room through the panel blinds. It was the type where you couldn’t tell if it was 7am or 11am, and I to wait for my eyes to adjust to see his face.
It was a peculiar morning, because there was no noise pollution. It seemed even the birds knew to stay home with their little bird families on Christmas Eve. The only noise in the room was his steady exhale into my chest. A few minutes passed and after a slew of vicious nightmares throughout the night, the thought of sleep tasted sour and tired me even though I had been awake for hours.
I pushed away slightly to stretch, and instinctively he pulled me in tighter, so his cheek reclaimed its rightful spot. I always loved when I held him as we slept for just that reason. Even in sleep he looked for me.
Outside, a car drove past the apartment and cued our awake. It was Christmas Eve after all, and the stores would be closing early. We had to grocery shop because we only had 3 eggs, 2 slices of bacon, a bag of onions, tomatoes, 3 limes, no milk and a handful of other food items that didn’t make sense when paired up for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Inside our room, the dim light reflected off our soft grey blanket and outlined his body perfectly. As I traced him with my hand, I grew jealous of the times anyone else saw him in that perfect foggy light that somehow always made small moments profound. I reached to rustle his hair to wake him like I did for the hundredth time but stopped myself because for the first time, in over a year, my “writer’s movie played.”
The longer I laid with him, the clearer the movie played. The sound tracked monologue of my voice narrated the scene of our room with a translucent grainy cinematographic filter. Time is sucked out of existence during the movie. Seconds and minutes are replaced by a flux of emotions that pass as the story and narration progress. There was no movement or sound to jerk me into reality, so an hour fluttered by. Effortlessly.
It was 11:27am and we both jumped out of bed, excited to take a shower and begin our day. I got up first and like the end of the trailer, the “writer’s movie,” slowly faded. The grainy filter became crisper, and the color of the real world bloomed back. It was completely gone after the 7 steps it took to get to the bathroom, but like an old faithful friend, I was excited for its inevitable return. We hopped into the warm shower and finally walked out the door at 12:32pm to start the Christmas Eve tradition.
It was 11-something when he shrugged “I’m waking up” before the close-eyed stretch - the true sign that he woke up and smiled at me with flushed pink cheeks.
We talked about what to do and ultimately decided to get various drinks from The World Market and soda taste our favorites along with Chick-fil-a for brunch. Both were his suggestion, a new tradition we had stumbled upon a week earlier when we first bought 7 different sodas that originated from America and Japan, a bag of Hawaiian chips, and Italian meats as our “lunch” for a date at the beach. On that especially warm and sunny day, another couple in their 40s decided to take advantage of the weather and had already set up their lounge chairs on the beach when we arrived. They were dancing and laughing and enjoying each other and after watching them for a few minutes, I turned and told him, “That’s going to be us.” Out of reaction, he smiled, bobbed his head down to watch them and squeezed my forearm before agreeing.
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