The Offline Mind

When I can’t sleep I see Andre in the dark. Some people see other things because they’re in other beds, living other lives. Except for maybe our daughter, Naima, but she’s only two months old and technically speaking her vision is still fairly undeveloped so she doesn’t see Andre in the dark, she just sees dark.

But when I can’t sleep, I see Andre. I just turn over, and there he is. Sometimes he looks like he is made of stone because everyone is bluish grey in the dark and his head and eyelids and features seem so large and precise. I pretend he has frozen solid, like Lake Michigan. I pretend that he knows I’m looking and so he is staying very still, like an artist’s muse. I paint him with broad strokes from the lights of cars passing through the snow slowly slowly in the street below. I imagine that I am the little mermaid and he is the statue I love, sinking deeper and deeper into the belly of the sea. I imagine all the cool of morning is locked inside his marble chest, but when I do touch him he’s warm and smooth like a calf.

When I can’t sleep I listen to Andre breathing. He gives out little colourful sighs here and there like a bubble-blowing chimney. Sometimes, like last night, he hums a little. It’s not so much music as it is a hum-ho. A huff or guffaw. I find it funny and I hug him a little sometimes when he does it but not enough to wake him.

If for any reason I have to wake him, he’s very grouchy. For example if I need help with something, or if the cat pukes while I’m breastfeeding (the baby, mind you, while I’m breastfeeding the baby…I’m not breast feeding the cat. To be clear, the cat is not puking breastmilk.) Andre in the dark sleeping is like a big statue that fell over and has been resting/growing moss/housing small woodland creatures for a thousand years. Andre in the dark suddenly awake is like a giant rumbling in his sleep because he smells the blood of an Englishman. But it only lasts a few seconds and then he remembers that he is actually really kind and he cleans up the cat puke for me. He’s not even mean to the cat (I’m sometimes mean to the cat, but I feel bad afterward and spoil him the whole next day).

I’m going to end this blog post the lazy way because it is in fact bedtime: I love sleeping beside Andre. I’m glad he’s a man and not a stone. If he was a stone he would be my pet rock and I would give him a yarn moustache. I would plant him in a bonsai garden or tuck him into the knot of an old oak tree. He would like that.