We planned for this

 We planned for this and still, the news took my breath away, but only for a moment. I mean, it’s just a thing, fixable, not serious. I’m making more of this than it needs to be.

Three mostly blissful years later, I don’t think it will ever be enough time. We are both seniors and survivors of the 1970s and ’80s, yes, '60s too, with all that entails. His life was so much more rock ‘n roll than mine and seemingly filled with many liaisons without attachments. One of those liaisons was me, more than once but we’d not made the click that keeps. When the 80s hit I sought out the attachments that some would call normal he was still rocking and rolling. We missed.

But here we are, finding each other again after all the benchmarks have faded into the rearview. 

He gets up long before I do and tends to our furry kids with loving and attentive care and then comes to wake me with the same gentle touch. It’s a beautiful morning each day. This day began a few hours earlier, however. The physician wanted him around the same time I’m usually getting out of bed. What else is there to do except tend the animals and each other? I am grateful for the opportunity to do so. 

I dressed with care, thinking I would present with a little makeup, perfume, and a favorite cashmere sweater so that he would have that memory as he went in for the procedure. I know I’m being silly, thinking he’s actually noticing and not just focused on his own needs as he should. He did notice the makeup. 

There was so little traffic the hour-long commute was an easy one and we were almost an hour early, less stress for a stressful event. We chatted, lounged, mask-less in the car before going in, and sat together on a bench in the waiting room before they called him to go in. A quick kiss after his name was called and he was gone. Now I wait.

I headed for the loo and coffee shop after they took him. I had fasted with him but now I could indulge. Stopping in the ladies' room I noticed that my ‘special’ outfit wasn’t so wonderful after all. The shirt was a bit wrinkled and my cashmere sweater, old and a bit wrinkled too showed the age of all the years it had lived in my moth-y closet. He hadn’t seen any of that. I had been beautiful to him, as he is to me.

To the world, I know how I present, old, gray and pudgy, short little old lady. I smile, I’m nice to most people but in his presence, I am a queen, shining, the gray is silver, the pudge is power and I’m not so old. We’re seasoned warriors together. In him, I see all his faces, from 1972 to 2022 and they are all reasons to smile. 

I wait. His procedure is about to start if they are on schedule. We’ll have to wait to see how it turns out. The coffee was bitter and the bagel was like spongy cardboard. Thank the gods for cream cheese!

I was called to sit with him afterward. We joked and made light of things. It had all gone well and we wondered together what the results would mean in the long run. He gratefully enjoyed a hospital pizza and coffee while waiting out the recovery time so he could leave.

The drive home was going to feature a stop for lunch but the prospect of just being home and comfortable became the better option. 

The sigh of relief has been extended over several days, watching the reports and talking to his doctor. Little by little life returns to our version of normal. Sure, we know our time together isn't the same as some other couples. Who knows how much time any of us have with our loved ones anyway? Age has little to do with it.