Running Free

Running Free

Friday, April 10, 2009

Spousal Semantics

I like to walk. In the morning, at night. Both are good.
My DH likes to walk – sometimes. He says he likes to walk in the morning and also in the evening.

The only problem is the semantics of the terms ‘morning’ and ‘evening.’

You see, to me morning means before 6:30 a.m.

To my husband, morning means after 8:00 a.m. I should caveat that walking for my husband is a weekend activity. He is after all, the breadwinner in the family. I am the maker of peanuts (but not the ones causing all of the salmonella poisoning). My earnings are more like peanut shells now that I think about it. But I digress.

By 7:30 a.m. the day is half over, the birds have been chirping, the bees have been buzzing and I have gotten two loads of laundry done – folded if I am on a real roll. I like to get up before the sun and get busy, stop and smell the flowers, listen to the gentle stretch of the leaves as they unfurl their strong green tendrils and wake to another day. I like to become one with the morning. I like to say hello to the bunnies nibbling sweet grass near our home. I like to listen to the soft coo of the morning dove gently wake her spouse.

And speaking of spouse, I do have a technique I have used for years to try and gently coax my DH from the ether world of deep sleep. I give him a gentle kiss on the cheek and a gentle massage along his back.

This is where once more, semantics differ. What I refer to as a gentle loving kiss upon the cheek of my slumbering beloved, my DH refers to as a ‘power suction peck.’
What I refer to as a gentle nudge, DH refers to as an SSR which stands for ‘shake, rattle and roll.’
Now, being that he is of the left hemisphere species and I am of the right hemisphere species, we sometimes are left in a quandary.

By the time my gentle attempts at rousing DH from his supine state take hold, the sun has placed herself high in the sky and is beaming way too bright for this fair skinned maiden to even fathom walking in her Vitamin D-enriched rays.

‘Not to worry’ I console my DH who by now is bright eyed and ready to start his day at an hour where most of the work of the early morning has been done and stowed.

“We can have an evening constitutional,” I say to him with a loving and caring smile.
Being the patient and obliging husband that he is, my dear sweet DH agrees. But the look on his face sometimes is more like someone in a state of well, kidney stone passage.
And thus, the day passes.

Until the appointed walk time. For me night is 6:30, 7:30 p.m.

For DH, it is anything up until the point of actual darkness. Semantics.

I try and explain to DH the wonders of an evening constitutional: the owls calling to each other, the moon silently making her entrance into the night sky. Not to mention the silence of moment, with crickets as a sweet serenade and backdrop to the growing peace of the evening.
But alas, semantics once more creep into the moment and I must bat my lashes such as they are and croon sweet nothings to ask my DH to accompany me on a walk through the trails that surround our home.

It is lovely and calming and very Zen - but alas, once more, the two shall be but ships passing in the night, one heading north, the other heading south.
Recently, my DH and I were on the walking trail that parallels our home and one of the garage doors was open letting us peer in where we were greeted by the sight of a very large television screen and a man on an exercise bike, or maybe he was sitting on the couch. My eyes being what they are, it was hard to tell.

“Now that is what I call a set up,” said DH.

“A place to escape from all the noise and chatter inside the house, a place of one’s own, where you can do what you want, when you want…”

Indeed, I thought to myself.

He didn’t need to say another word. I got his message. Virginia Woolf I am not, but I am happy to walk by myself in the peace of my own company.

Hrmph!

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