So it’s come to this. I cannot sleep with my husband anymore. It’s not that I don’t love him—or that he’s sick or I’m sick. It’s just that I can no longer sleep with another person in the bed, or perhaps even in the room.
Ever since having had Covid when I slept in my meditation/guest room for two weeks, I’ve had trouble sleeping in our marriage bed. During those two weeks I could cough or stretch out with impunity and not worry about waking him. We’d just bought a new queen-sized mattress for the guest room to replace the old full-sized one that was no fun for couples. When I got Covid I broke in the new mattress by staying in bed forty-eight hours and didn’t stray far from it when I did get up. After the first few nights of coughing and hacking, I slept well for ten consecutive nights in the still quiet of that space.
But now real guests are coming so I’ve fumigated and vacated the room. Last night was my first night back in bed with my beloved husband. He read in his study so as not to disturb me in case I turned out the light before he did. But I heard the door open, felt the floor shake with each footfall as he padded across the room in the semi-dark to his side of the bed. The mattress sagged and I fell inward, needing to brace myself as his weight shifted the dynamics of my position so I had to adjust how I was anchored to the bed. I listened to every rustle, every breath, every brief cough. I thought of my quiet, still bed in the guest room made up with clean sheets and pillowcases and knew I had no choice but to stick it out and hope sleep would come.
It did not.
First I got up to look for ear plugs in the hallway linen closet and not finding any, rummaged in the outside flap of my suitcase and found two old ones which I rolled up and stuck into my ears. But then the light on the humidifier was so bright I got up again and covered the piercing blue digital readout with a rag. Lying in bed, twitching and coughing myself, I figured it was hopeless.
I remember being puzzled as a little girl spending the night at my grandmother’s house why she slept in a separate bedroom from my grandfather. “He twitches too much. I start in bed with him to warm up his feet until he falls asleep and then I go to your Uncle Tom’s old bedroom.”
Perhaps I’ve become like my grandmother. Maybe I’ll start in bed with Bill and then slip out of bed into the guest room every night. And when guests are here, I’ll make do and take naps during the day. It sounds like an amicable solution. I’ll have to ask Bill what he thinks about it.
Bill and I make plans for other things that never happen at night anyway.