Having thrown open the bedroom window onto a wet, blustery morning, I lay myself across the top of the covers and try unsuccessfully to return to the land of Nod.

I reject a full 20 positions in an effort to escape my internal combustion, but eventually come to rest flat on my back with my head and arms danging off the side of the bed in the path of the breeze, and legs perpendicular to HH. I don’t do yoga, but I think this contortion would have made any yogi wonder at my sanity.

(It should be noted I can be just the tiniest bit dramatic on occasion…)

“Ugh. The back of my neck is dripping,” I lament in my grumpiest tone.

HH chuckles and gives my knee a pat. “Sorry, baby,” he says, and he really does mean it. When I suffer, he suffers. “Are you taking your medicine?”

“Of course I’m taking it,” I grouse. “Imagine how awful it would be if I didn’t!”

We lay in silence pondering the unfortunate possibilities of life with a middle aged and unmedicated wife. I can almost feel him shudder.

The wind is coming in waves now, lifting the curtains and rustling wet branches and what remains of last year’s unfallen leaves. It is a beautiful shush, accompanied by occasional smatters of rain.

Cooled now to almost bearable, I reorient myself to a favourite position curled up against HH’s side. This was how I used to lay in the years before I became a walking forest fire.

HH settles me against his chest and sighs contentedly. “Mmm,” he says, “it sounds like we’re at the seaside.”

Knowing well that my beloved does not often wax poetic or metaphorical, I am surprised by his revelation. The rush of the wind does indeed sound like waves on the seashore. I smile. “How very abstract of you.”

Unperturbed and secure with his own hidden depths, HH gives me a little squeeze. We lay in silence listening to the wind, a sound broken only by a car splashing its way down our lane.

“That sounds like a car,” he says in his best ‘waxing metaphorical’ tone, and I begin chuckling. The more I think about it, the funnier it gets and before long, we are laughing like loons at our own cleverness and stupidity.

Suddenly, the shrill tune of a bird is carried in on the breeze. It is spring, and apparently some little fellow is out there marking territory despite the rain. “That,” I state with all the authority of a budding ornithologist, “is a blue tit.”

He is silent for a moment, listening to the repeated call. “Jeepers,” he says. “Must be cold out.”

Well, I had to know that was coming. Still, I roll my eyes and snort at his silliness before snuggling deeper into his Kansas sweatshirt. As my chuckles die off, I am lulled into a pleasant stupor to the sounds of birds on a rainy seashore and the steady beat of HH’s much loved heart.

Mother Hen

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