Instead of an update, a routine

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville. 

Sometimes there's so much happening in the swirl of our lives that we forget to pay attention to the ordinary things, the common comforts, the regular routine.  So this week -- instead of talking about making Springerle with kids and grandkids, about teaching classes, about dance concerts, about multiple musical performances (Tuba Christmas! Voice recitals!), and such -- I thought I'd describe a bit of what happens underneath all that excitement.

There are ways that my husband and I seem to be incredibly different people on incredibly different schedules. This week alone, for example, he started the week at a military communications conference in Maryland, attended protests in a nearby city another day, visited friends all over the city in the middle of the week, and ended the week by boarding a train that led to a plane they will take him to summer in Brazil, where he'll be hanging out with Chemical engineers.  And me?  I went . . . to my office and back, a bunch of times.  My husband loves going, buying, and being with many people.  I love sitting, repairing, and treasure my "quiet time".  My husband is a night owl; I'm a morning lark.  

For all those reasons, it's kind of surprising that we have a daily joint routine that's so deeply entrenched that it almost seems like we're worn into a rut.  (If it's a rut, at least it's a really nice rut, though!)  When he's in town, here's the routine: 

• I wake before dawn, and go running with my friend(s); come back and hit "start" on the coffee maker that he'd set up the night before.  
• An hour or two later, he wakes up in time to get dressed and have coffee, too, and then he walks me the several blocks to work.  We hold hands the whole way.  (I told my students who saw us arrive one day, "the older we get, the more adorable it's going to be that we hold hands like that", and they responded, "Professor 'Snough, you're already adorable that way.")

  

  This is what it looks like at my office on Tuesdays
  when my dog joins me.  She's a magnet!
  My students think that Prewash is even more adorable than I am.

• During the day, we both do our own things.  
• In the evening, I come home and he makes dinner.  We eat together and then go for a walk around the block (repeating the holding hands thing).  It's always the same route, always with him on the left, me on the right, and we wave at the same neighbors who sit on the porch playing cards and rockin' the radio stations.   Sometimes, if we have a lot to talk about, we'll vary the routine by walking around the block twice.  That's spontaneity, for you!
• We get home and he does the dishes while I finish up email stuff.
• We watch TV together while he has tea (with too much sugar I warn him!) and I have ice cream (in which the sugar is almost certainly of the healthy variety) and tea with no sugar.  The shows we watch are mostly dystopian dramas, or shows with exceedingly unhappy families (think, HandMaid's Tale, The Crown), which is very much unlike our own incredibly pleasant, love-filled life.  
• We head upstairs for bed.  We read to each other.  Then he lies next to me while I fall off to sleep, at which point he gets up to go downstairs to do whatever it is he does after the late, late hour of 9 p.m.

The other evening, when we were reading to each other, he asked, "are you awake enough that I can go and get one more thing?"  I said yes, and he ran to his backpack and brought back a sonnet he'd written.  I didn't know what to expect, but after I heard it, I thought it was so sweet I wanted to share it.  Here it is (with one or two lines changed -- with his consent --for reasons of modesty).

Sonnet One, by my guy

Up at six, in command before first light.
Run, read, pray shadowed by she each moment.
Holding hands we walk to campus, in sight
Of Home. Saying how the day will be spent.

Equation, persuasion, celebration
Of life, learning, and the beauty of math.
The envy of the administration
Admired. One who follows her own path

In the evening dinner and drama:
Only on TV. We watch distresses
In bliss and serenity. To six Mama
She is, maybe more, anyone’s guesses.

After reading, we cuddle up before sleep
buried in blankets, with affection miles deep.

Awww.  I am really touched.

And thats the . . . well, not "news", so maybe "olds"(?) from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.