28 September, 2024: My Husband’s Rest

It is five in the morning. The only light comes from outside of the windows.  Their apartment is right by the intersection of one of Qufu’s biggest roads, the one which circles around the city and divides its tourist attractions from the rest of the town. They are south of the commercial street which regularly gets tour buses visiting the temple and graveyard of 孔子, or Confucius. Drunks sleep on that street. Their shouts, as well as the occasional drunk men looking for prostitutes, disturb Mother’s rest, but what usually wakes Mother up is Father drifting from the bed to ready himself for work. He would carefully fold open the sheet and tiptoe in his slippers to the bathroom, but would have to turn a light on to properly navigate it. That would almost always wake Mother up. If it was early in the morning she would close her eyes and pretend to be sleeping; if it was late enough in the morning she would get up and start her cooking.

It is five in the morning, and Mother’s eyes open from habit. She looks out the window and notices that there is no natural light outside yet. She looks to her other side to see her husband completely unstirred. It’s not normal for him to still be sleeping if it is already five. It has to be earlier than that, she thinks. She shuts her eyes, until suddenly a thought crackles in the back of her head.

Father retired yesterday. Today is the first day on which he will have nothing to do except be home with her and his mother.

Mother steadies her body, she steadies her breath. The movement has not disturbed Father. How could it? He has been sleep deprived for decades, and this is the first day since his twenties that he is able to sleep in without worrying about anything. The light from the outside is dim but filters over him. He is curled on his side in a fetal position. His freckles are like baby powder over his sand-coloured face. His wrinkles are crisp but relaxed. He looks at peace, at ease.

It’s so cute seeing him like this.

Mother has her usual schedule. When she wakes up, she goes to her mother-in-law’s room, checks if she still has a pulse, if she is properly breathing, if her diaper has any faeces or urine. By this hour her mother-in-law is usually well soiled. Mother has to dispose of the diaper, clean her genital areas, lean her against the stone wall of the bathroom, and throw water over her via a bucket, washing her from head to toe. After all that, she has to get breakfast ready for the both of them. Father likes to eat the glutinous cakes of 孔府菜, so she takes the time to steam them. Her mother-in-law can only eat soup so Mother prepares that for her. It is a lot of hard work and cooking and it takes at least an hour. If she wants them to eat well for breakfast today, she has to get up now and get to it.

But Father looks so precious as he sleeps. It is almost like a statue of 孔子 itself. There is an aura of complete rest and serenity to his countenance. There is a sense that everything wrong in the world could happen and all at once—and nothing would affect him.

This is her husband. This is her one true love. This is the man who is in her bed, sleeping lazily and innocently.

Mother puts her head on her husband’s shoulder. She wraps her left arm around his chest and the other around his neck. He is so tired that it isn’t even possible to wake him up. He doesn’t even stir. She feels sleepy just by looking at him.

A part of her mind worries. What if her mother-in-law needs her help right now? Everyone will be hungry by the time the sun comes up, and it will be her fault if she doesn’t get started cooking now. Can she handle that pressure?

And yet she closes her eyes.

She focuses instead on another thought. Her husband is no longer going to be spending most of his day at the hospital. She is with her husband now, and she will be with her husband and have his time for many more years to come. They’ll have that life they had promised to each other when they first married. They will live together and be only with each other until the days they are too old to remember even the difference between the characters ‘he’ and ‘she’. It will be ‘he’ and ‘she’ and ‘she’ and ‘he,’ and for the next few decades it will only be ‘them’. It’ll be like they are starting for the first time, around the age when they are turning seventy.

Mother’s eyes firmly shut, and nothing, not even the fiery sun of the afternoon nor the disturbing fears in the back of her mind, seem able to awaken her.