Autumn Bliss

Two days’ memories and mornings to record: two days Here and There I don’t want to forget.

There is one upside to having this bung knee (turns out to me a small tear in the meniscus with associated sprains and swelling): I can’t walk quickly. When I’m walking quickly, my mind’s usually focussed – insofar as it’s focussed at all! – on where I’m going, be that catching public transport, going shopping, just getting out of a crowd, or whatever.

Being forced to walk slowly has effectively forced the mind to slow down as well, and that makes it much easier to focus on the person walking by my side. I may not catch more glimpses of him than usual, but there are other ways of feeling his presence.

Going through Fawkner this morning, we didn’t have time to stop for a full session of what-happened-yesternight, but we did pause under a beautiful weeping elm for a kiss. I asked Louis what we did, and he said he’d show me. He put a finger on my forehead and I saw a fragment of our day at Home. We were in the back garden, playing Doggy Football. As you can probably guess, there are no rules and no teams; it’s a free-for-all. At one point Louis and I stepped aside for a kiss, and might have taken ourselves off to play games of our own, but we didn’t get the chance. We were promptly swamped by the hairy horde. All this was observed by the kitties (some of them, at least) from vantage points around the garden and back terrace. I have the distinct feeling they were watching through half-slitted eyes and feeling superior while the silly two- and four-legs made fools of themselves.

Walking through Fawkner was as great a pleasure as receiving the memory. We had had our first truly cold night of the season, and it was a perfect Melbourne autumn morning – crisp, cold and sunny. Louis and I strolled through the trees and down different paths from our usual ones, and I felt what I have several times lately, and many times before: love washing over me. It’s hard to describe, but it’s almost the emotional equivalent of wrapping oneself in an eiderdown, the lightest and most comforting ever. Not that that’s all of it, because it’s love coming from someone else, the someone I love the same way, and is not just comforting, it’s joyful. I wouldn’t say it’s euphoric, but it has something of that light-headedness about it.

So many words, so clumsy for trying to capture that feeling!

We had walked a few minutes this way, hand in hand, when Louis tugged mine a little, wanting to stop under a tree for another kiss. I felt his heart: not its beating but the almost tremulous need and wanting, and the simultaneous joy and satisfaction and … safe arrival … that we both feel. The I love you so much, the disbelief, almost, of brand-new love, new discovery that he/she loves me! and then knowing it so well, being so familiar with it, relieved and triumphant restful and all the mix of things that makes our known-each-other-forever marriage a constant honeymoon.

When we walked on, flung his arms up, shouting to the sky. Then he turned a cartwheel. And then another one. And then collected his scarf and hat that he’d lost doing them, and tossed the hat high before catching and donning it.

I arrived at work blissed out on love.

This all came after yesterday’s memory, which I’m not sure how to describe without either telling too much or baulking and not telling enough for my own satisfaction. It was another memory Louis particularly wanted to share, but after I grasped the outline I wanted my own mind’s view; it wasn’t one where I wanted to see myself from his eyes.

It had been another gardening day; we were planting the front flower beds. The short part of the day I recall starts when we were eating lunch, sitting in the front courtyard. I was finishing my cup of tea, and looked across at my husband. I don’t know why; I don’t think he spoke. But looking at him sitting there in his purple tee-shirt and jeans and gumboots … I wanted him. I wanted him right there and then, all love and desire in one. I leaned forward, caught his eye, and went to sit on his lap. We kissed, stood, and kissed again. I asked where he would like to go; surprisingly enough, we had never made love in the front garden before. It’s not for lack of privacy! We just spend most of our outdoor time in the back.

Louis said he knew a good place (yes, he’s used it with other lovers; I just asked) and we went to a shaded, quite dark spot, under a tree, near a hedge. How can I describe this without going too far, or not far enough? I’m still puzzling over that. We were urgent and needful, not playing, this time, but not driven by sex for sex’s sake; it is never like that for us. The pleasuring – call it foreplay if you will – did not last long; it was more deep kissing, kissing each other’s faces and bodies, than a leisurely exploration or detailed, deliberate arousal. I wanted him inside me, he wanted to be inside me, and the coupling was the main part of our loving. Holding him, seeing that beautiful, beautiful face so close, wrapping myself around the solidity of his body, clutching his hair, seeing those dark, clear, brown-green eyes open wide as he climaxed … even a moment that would have made me laugh had I the breath, when he collapsed on me, gasping “God Ceiling Cat” …

Is it any wonder we have been floating on clouds of love these last two days?