The dream was happening in a department store, with digital televisions of all shapes and sizes all around me.  Some were monitors that looked more like movie theater screens than television sets.  There was someone speaking to me from behind… and I seemed to be having difficulty turning to see him as the images changed. The images seem far brighter than they were in the department store.

Then the brightness clarifies to reveal the bedroom window on my side of the bed.  These days I wake right up… but I don’t get right up.  I take inventory of things before I move around too much. I regularly fall asleep on my right side with a pillow between my legs on the recommendation of my chiropractor.  It seems to help because I see him a lot less often since I started doing this.  My left shoulder is a non-issue as well lately… as long as I sleep on my right side.  When nuzzling with the Care Giver I sometimes forget and fall asleep on my left side.  On those mornings, I invariably wake up with a shoulder ablaze with a deep-rooted pain.  On those mornings I really move slowly.  If she’s still asleep and too close… it takes some real concentration to convince myself that it really doesn’t hurt as much as it does.  On those mornings it’s a bone deep ache for quite awhile, because I don’t move.  I don’t take the weight off of it.  I don’t want to wake her up.

This morning there is no pain and the inventory is brief.  Thus far I’ve only made small movements as the fog of a deep sleep clears.  Before allowing any major repositioning… I wait to see if there is movement or sound behind me.  I usually awaken before the Care Giver, but not always.  Some mornings, she just waits for me to join her, anxious to somehow glide across the sheets like she does and settle into my arms.   Then there are the mornings when she is still deep in her REM sleep, steadily breathing deeply.    It would be wrong to call what she does snoring… just deep breathing. 

This morning I don’t hear a thing, and I don’t feel her behind me.  There is the briefest moment of panic that I might turn and she won’t be there. My unspoken fear is that she might have been driven to a guest bedroom, or a couch, due to my own occasionally thunderous snoring.  I can’t lay claim to deep breathing Precious Reader, the Care Giver calls it a freight train.  

So I make the first move.  It’s a heavy, ungraceful twist at the waist…followed by a continued turning of my head.  The profusion of extra pillows that we both like to sleep with can be comfortable, but confusing at the occasion of the first move of the morning.  The mattress and sheets seem to pull at me in animated comedy as I execute this maneuver, as if I am actually struggling upward from some subterranean layer of the bed.  The bed complains beneath me in poorly orchestrated harmony with the complaints coming from my body.  There is a slight pop from an unruly bone somewhere in my leg… and I can feel my hip shift with a more subtle sound.  Since there is no pain… I ignore the noise.

When the Care Giver comes into view for the first time in the morning, my body has trained itself to exhale.  It happens so frequently these days that I don’t realize that I am actually holding my breath.  Too many years of waking up alone in that same king size bed I suppose. 

I cannot see her face as she is facing away from me this morning.  Unlike me, she does not seem to have a preference.  It’s a toss-up whether she falls asleep facing me or away from me. 

This quick glance offers only her hair, a partially bare shoulder, and a lovely hip showing more cheek than panty.  I make a spontaneous decision, and while using my right elbow as kind of a kick-stand… I reach behind me with my left hand and place it on nicely exposed hip.  I don’t grip the cheek or shake her.  From past experience I need only to rest my hand on her butt.

Things happen fast after that.   I hear her disembodied voice saying, “Hi Hon,” without turning around or moving noticeably.  There is an extra heartbeat felt like a pulse through the palm of my hand.  Then in a flurry of activity… the sheets, the pillows, and the feminine form beneath them all come alive at the same time. Her body seems to magically rotate and my first glimpse of her familiar morning face comes into view. As the rotation continues she is rolling toward me, coming quickly.  She is like an escape artist.  Where the sheets and pillows conspire to restrict my movements, these same confounding fabrics melt away as she moves through them like you would a veil of smoke. The first time I witnessed this magic trick of hers I remember staring in confusion and alarm, but this is old hat by now.  Besides, I have my own steps to consider in this dance.

The explosion of limbs and bed clothes coming at me now signals my big move for the morning.  Unlike my awkward and ungainly first move of the morning, which can be as slow and ponderous as I need it to be, the big move is like a sprinter coming out of the starting blocks... and timing is everything.  I fall off of my “kick stand” as I smoothly reach down to grasp the pillow from between my knees.   It takes more than a little muscular exertion to extract it out from beneath the sheets which held it fast throughout the night.  They do not release it easily now.   As soon as the pillow is removed, I use my legs to push against the bed to start the beginning of my own rotation.

I have noticed that the big move is almost always a rotation to my left, toward the ceiling... as opposed to rotating down to my right and over the pillow beneath me. The ceiling rotation gives me the opportunity for yet another quick inhalation of air, not unlike a swimmer whose oxygen intake is carefully timed with each stroke.  After months of executing the big move it happens automatically. 

I am so jealous of the Care Giver’s ability to come out of a deep sleep and instantly navigate the obstacle course of twisted sheets and pillows.  (The fact that she can do this just as smoothly at night... in the dark blows my mind even more.) My own rotation is more like the lumbering swell of a ship being tossed by giant waves.  Once I have passed the apex of the ceiling rotation, I can use momentum to continue rolling into place.

As I hit my mark, my left shoulder sings out with a painful twinge while I reach out my arm, palm facing up.  The Care Giver now smoothly comes to rest with her head on my shoulder.  Her left knee is instantly lying on my left leg which was not in that position a mere millisecond earlier.  My arm encircles her shoulder and my fingers begin their automatic, rhythmic caress along her shoulder, neck, and down across her back.  She then takes a minute to reach down with her left hand to tug the nearest sheets back up over us, before reaching underneath that sheet to caress my chest. 

The timing and choreography is perfect.  The pain in my shoulder is irrelevant.  I am so happy to have this woman in my arms once again this morning, that I would endure pain and suffering far greater than this. 

The Care Giver almost instinctively begins initiating our sexual morning dance. She begins stroking and kissing and sucking on very intimate things.  Her actions convey the depth of her heartfelt love and passion.   These attentions are most affective, as always, and they truly begin to get my attention.  Parts of me that were still asleep this morning…. wake up! 

It is just about now, when she has some part of me in her mouth (often between her teeth) … that the Care Giver falls asleep again.  I can tell because the licking and the sucking have stopped, and the deep breathing has begun again.  The first time this happened, uncomfortable images flashed through my mind of awakening a startled wife whose jaw snaps shut in surprise.  This, of course, has never happened and I don't worry about such things any more.   

However, I do consider my reaction to her tendency to fall asleep like this as further reassurance of my love for this woman.  I remember, in past lives, I would have reacted with annoyance or frustration if such a thing had happened.  Now, it simply tells me how much she wants to make love to me, even though she hasn’t finished sleeping.   Now it makes me smile.  She will wake up and fall asleep like this several times this morning.  Maybe we will actually make love or maybe we won’t.

And that’s just fine with me.