"Getting old is a bitch!" The words were spoken softly and with proper venom. I had just entered the bathroom after noticing the illuminated dial on the bedroom clock. "2:18am"
I didn't turn the bathroom or bedroom light on because I wanted to let my wife sleep. We had a good evening, shared dinner with friends, joked and laughed. Then those friends went home and we went to bed.
I've watched my wife get undressed for years and it always is more than watching someone get undressed. It is always sexual. She doesn't look like she did when she was eighteen. Neither do I. In her case when she gets undressed I still get turned on. Every time. Tonight was one of those gift-from-God nights where she was feeling playful. It isn't about physicality when she gets turned on, it's about something else. Whatever it is, I am grateful.
We progressed from kisses and light touching to me helping her undress and her undressing me. There is a bit more droop when her bra releases her breasts now than was there the first time I released them, years ago. There are a few more stretch marks around her middle too. A c-section scar. I don't see those as distractions, just as indicators that she has lived a full life.
Ten years ago when she undressed me there was a light dusting of gray in the hair of my chest. There was a bit more girth than the first time she pulled my shirt off that night before I left for Vietnam. But no scars. Now there were plenty. Ten surgeries in ten years had left me looking wounded. She doesn't seem to care. She does care about my health and hers. She watches what we eat, and how much we exercise, how much we drink and how often we do things that might not be good for us.
Sitting on the can at two in the morning is a hell of a time to be thinking. I'd rather be sleeping. I'm here anyway. The thoughts seem to go to the past more often than to the future. Maybe that's because there is more in my past than in my future.
I remember back when we had sex almost every night and most days. I remember that time when we were moving and had everything we owned in a U-Haul truck. We drove all day and it was getting dark. We stopped at a diner and ate and saw some people with sleeping bags headed into a campground. On a whim I pulled in and rented a camp space. My wife wanted to know what I was doing.
I wanted an adventure. While she went for a walk around the campground I set up camp. I opened the back of the truck and unloaded our four-poster bed and mattress. I set it up just like we were in our new home with sheets and a quilt. When Barb returned from her walk she laughed and said at least we'd get a good night's sleep in our own bed.
When it was time for bed Barb went off to the camp bathroom and came back in a short, see-thru nightie. I skinned down to my shorts and we went to bed.
I remember how great it was being in bed together that night, holding each other, watching the stars. We kissed a hundred or maybe a thousand times. Then Barb sat up and pulled the nightie over her head and hung it on the bed post. I hung my shorts on my bed post and we resumed kissing.
