autonomic love affair
Sometimes, waking at night, I find myself saying "I love you" to my wife, or smiling or humming or stroking that message. Part of it is because that's how I feel at the moment.
But partly it's something else. I've noticed that I have a definite sub-thought of looking ahead to a time when I've lost my senses or my sanity, a time when I'm much much older, and I want to have spent my life setting patterns of loving. I want to be able to say "I love you" when I can no longer say anything else.
My grandmother, on her deathbed, in a near-comatose state, having lost her ability to form sentences or recognize people, would chant along with my parents as soon as they started reading the Psalms to her. They were so deeply embedded in her, such a part of her, that they became her autonomic religion: her body itself breathed the scriptures, those great passages of forbearance and eternal love.
And, seeing my wife now, feeling her body next to mine, smelling her smell, I'm already aware that I'm becoming melded to her, even at this first stage, this first page, these early stirrings of an autonomic love affair.
But partly it's something else. I've noticed that I have a definite sub-thought of looking ahead to a time when I've lost my senses or my sanity, a time when I'm much much older, and I want to have spent my life setting patterns of loving. I want to be able to say "I love you" when I can no longer say anything else.
My grandmother, on her deathbed, in a near-comatose state, having lost her ability to form sentences or recognize people, would chant along with my parents as soon as they started reading the Psalms to her. They were so deeply embedded in her, such a part of her, that they became her autonomic religion: her body itself breathed the scriptures, those great passages of forbearance and eternal love.
And, seeing my wife now, feeling her body next to mine, smelling her smell, I'm already aware that I'm becoming melded to her, even at this first stage, this first page, these early stirrings of an autonomic love affair.
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