from A Year of Morning Thanks

Body Heat

Generally, my wife doesn’t wake me up when she gets out of bed in the middle of the night. I don’t think I hear her, or at least her leaving doesn’t mentally register.

But when she returns, she’s cold, so she comes back in like a bride on a honeymoon—well, that’s overstating; she comes back in like a heat-seeking missile—that’s laughably inappropriate; she comes back in to bed really needing me—well, maybe only my body heat.

That's when things register. She comes in and wraps her arms around me—maybe selfishly, I won't judge her motivations. But I have no trouble suffering her self-seeking behavior.

In just a few minutes on this chilly, early February morning, I’m going back to bed myself, thankful, as I enter, for body heat—that’s a sort of crass way of saying it; thankful for a particular form of loving warmth that may well be out of the reach of my words.