Babes Spooning in Lap(p)Land

I had a dream last night about a competition. I think M and our kids were at a table listening to the gaming rules and pleased that the Dog we were to train for this (maybe) sled-dog race was a happy but beefy mix of German Shepherd with Bernard -- a winner, if ever there was one. (We had Bernards for many years until the last one, Sweet Mitzie, died of a seizure -- but that's old news.) There was a twist in the dream, though. When I went up to finalize details with the head of this school-like meeting, I/We were told that our dog was to be another, this Scrubby Old Runt of a Mutt ... more like GuntherDog than Klondike King who led Sgt. Preston of the Royal Mounties on his treks in the North Country to hunt down criminals. ... But somehow that was going to work for us in Lappland. This Scruff was going to lead us to victory.

Making Lappland and this little scruff work and thinking about Playing in the Last Quarter?  "Only the Shadow knows." Whatever happened last night in bed before the dream, my heart had gone where it has so many times before ... out of rhythm. I didn't bother to take my (not) resting heart-rate but it was > 140. Ah! It's no longer a particularly frightening experience ... more a signal of another time to reflect.

Hey! It's 1:34 AM and there's little else to do but reflect. The body? I could feel M's knees just touching the middle of my thighs. I turned and so did she, but only for a moment. I found my right hand resting on her right shoulder. Soft. The air smelled right. I remembered that on our just completed trip, M, two of our kids, a grand-daughter and I were sitting somewhere in an Italian Piazza. A woman walked by. I commented -- surprisingly to my fellow Pilgrims and perhaps somewhat inappropriately: "These Italian women smell delicious." And, now, the air around M smelled the same. We turned, again. Her knees once more touching the backs of my thighs. It occurred to me that it was just about 50 years, now, of this quotidian and nocturnal dance. People call it spooning, but spoons are objects ... and these dancers are relational beings ... sharing something more than heat.

Reflecting on it more ...  there I was ... not sitting on M's lap but laying in her lap, nonetheless. I laughed. Laps -- or are they Lapps -- are different than Lascivious Loins, aren't they? Still ... Maybe those are two of the central structures of a long marriage: Laps and Lascivious Loins. I liked my little mid-night joke and smiled.

I suppose 65 years ago, both M and I were sitting in laps ... the backs of our thighs perched on the knees of our Moms ... both gone, now ... Moms and their laps. And 50 years of the dance with each other, now ... two old folk folded like babies ... fetal ... 

"You lie in my lap." 

"No. You lie in mine." 

I fell back asleep and can't recall who, at that moment, provided -- and who was provided with -- a lap.