You know when you're fussing around cleaning up the kitchen and very slowly you realize one of your husbands is trying his damnedest to keep his composure but his eyes are involuntarily turning pink and his nose red as he sniffles and clears his throat to indicate he's fine, it's probably a cold?
(What? This doesn't happen? Or you mean you only have one husband? I never know. I try to keep you in the loop and make this seem like it's all regular and everyday but it probably isn't. I don't know any other poly/communal people in real life. Committed ones, I mean. I don't know anyone who lives like we do. Maybe that means we're extraordinary or maybe it just means we're weird. I'm fine with either. Let's move along now.)
Lochlan? What's the matter?
He turns the iPad around so I can see that Pink Floyd is officially over. The band he lives and breathes by who unofficially went their separate ways years ago, and then Richard Wright died and mostly finished them off shortly before we moved out here. He still listens to them every single day, having begun long before I met him and then afterward using their music as a lullaby when I would be afraid of the dark (or the light for that matter). Fearless and Wish You Were Here in particular and oh, rats, my eyes are stinging now.
This happens with alarming regularity too. All the greats are moving along, dying or frankly getting old and wanting to do other things and sometimes gearing up thinking they can bring back the good old days only to discover it's exhausting and times have changed.
(Ben, for example. Ben keeps finding this out and he's only in his late forties. These guys are in their late sixties and seventies. Holy!)
Loch composes himself at last and wipes his eyes on his sleeves. Allergies, he mutters, and he heads outside to see to the woodpile. Fall is coming so the last of the pile from the previous year will be moved to the side of the house to make room for the next years'. And his neck and shoulders will double in size again and sue me, I really like that.
I go to the sideboard and fetch his headphones for him just as he comes back for them. I smile and he smiles back. They had a good run, they've given me a good soundtrack.
Half beauty, half madness?
The way everything should be, love. He kisses the top of my head and out he goes.
