Outlander

I’ve been watching Outlander lately.  For the uninitiated, it’s a series based on a novel.  Essentially feminist porn, with all the psychological and emotional backstory that we women need to make the sex sing (ok, maybe not all women but certainly me).  There’s time-travel (which is the reason I don’t have tattoos, just in case I ever get the opportunity), loads of Scottish accents (be still my heart), and an extremely hunky, deep-feeling Scottish laird (more beefcake than I usually go for but I would NOT kick him out of bed for eating crackers).  The entire series (and the novels it’s based on) is from a female gaze.  And so the heroine is brunette instead of blond, she is whip-smart and mouthy, sometimes she is appropriately unwashed and uncoiffed.  Rape lurks, because, for us ladies, it does.  She often saves herself, though sometimes she can’t.  Because sometimes we can’t.

I was binging last night, under a quilt, stitching cashmere, cats curled against me, glass of wine nearby.  Claire, our heroine, told Jamie, our beefcake, the whole truth about her time-travel, about her other husband in her other time.  She risked his love by fully revealing herself.  And suddenly I was gushing tears.

What touched me was that when she told him her story, unvarnished and unabridged, he listened, quietly, compassionately, for hours.  And when she was finally spent, she had the great luxury of being understood.  And that, I realized, more than romance, more than sex, is what I miss.   Having a partner to listen to every word, to love me even with all my mistakes, all my mis-steps, to help me carry the load of my story.  I imagined what it’d be like to tell someone everything that’s happened since Mihiretu’s adoption, every twist and turn, every heartbreak, and to have that person, that man (because God help me I can’t talk myself out of being straight), hear it all, feel it all with me, for me, just as I would do for him, with his story.

I have such beautiful friends.  They carry parts of my story, some more parts than others.  But I’m not talking about friendship.  I’m talking about a love relationship, a partnership, a last-person-you-talk-to-at-night, first-person-you-talk-to-in-the-morning, a one-stop-shop, someone you are naked with, in every sense.  Because, as you know because you carry your own story, it’s a lot to hold alone.

An outlander is someone who stands outside society, a foreigner, a stranger.  I think we all have our outlander moments.  And I think we all want to come in out of the cold, to be home.  Sometimes that home resides, at least partially, in another person.  I’ve been an outlander, these last years, there’s no doubt.  Sometimes I like it.  Sometimes I want to belong.  I want someone to understand my foreign tongue, to make sense of it, because they love me.

Sleepyhead

My greatest luxury is sleep.  I’ll take it over facials, five star dining, diamonds.  It’s really convenient that it’s free.

During my waking hours, I’m all action and efficiency, a multi-task master.  I rarely sit.  On the rare occasion I do, let’s say some tv with the kids in the evening, I have a sewing project on hand.  But, come 9pm on most nights, I’m in bed, happily curled up with my Kindle, deep in a novel.  Soon enough, it’s lights out and the adventure begins.

I generally sleep for nine to ten hours at a time, which allows for a lot of REM.  Consequently, my dream world rivals my daylight hours.  I feel like a deep-sea diver, plunging to the very bottom of the ocean, spending hours slowing examining treasures, turning them over in my hand, my hair floating up and behind me like a mermaid, bubbles blowing past my face.  I like that world just as much as I like this one.

Because my subconscious has all kinds of time to work through what’s pressing, I often end up with some screwy dreams at the end of the night.  Hillary and Bill trying to persuade me to back her for another run, Michelle mad at me - again! - for flirting with Barack, Bruce Springsteen serenading me onstage ala Courtney Cox with a specially-penned song.  Last night, for instance, my friend Josie was wondering if I wanted her bed - she was getting a new one.  I debated, it sloped from head to foot (which Josie said would be good for my sinuses), but then remembered my own beautiful bed and said no way, Josie (ho-say).

I built my bed a year ago.  It sits in the strange alcove off the living-room that I call my bedroom.  With some IKEA shelving units, plywood and ingenuity, I built the bed high off the floor, cornered just at window height.  Most seasons, I sleep with that big window wide open to the canyon below, the sounds and smells of the night drifting in on the breeze.  It’s almost as good as a screened-in porch.  I hear raccoons chirping, deer crashing through the brush, cats yowling, coyotes howling, one night I swear I heard a mountain lion right below me, chasing a yelping deer, the big cat growling, roaring, it’s voice deep and loud like an earthquake.

The bed holds me perfectly but for awhile last year when I was dating a man who was also a giant, who was anxious about sleeping on the outer edge for fear of falling to the floor and so was tucked in by the window on the less fortified part of the structure, I would wake at 3am sloping towards him, concerned about my engineering.

The other night I got in bed, the first cool night of the fall, and rejoiced in the good sleeping weather.  A chilled room and a pile of quilts, plus a couple of cats as furry personal heaters, what’s better?  It’s my favorite moment of the day, when the kids are stowed, the work put away, my teeth brushed, face clean of make-up, I’m the truest version of myself. No matter how catastrophic the day, how terrifying my worries, it is a reliable moment of comfort, of home.