Next to a Scientist

What is it like to wake up next to a scientist of a chilly South Jersey Friday morning?

Well, after saying "By the way..." (which shorthand language means "by the way, I adore you...",)you get a weather report, if there is a crack in the window curtain. Remarks about the rays and where they may be hitting the wall or bedcovers. There are sometimes noises emanating from the kitchen below -- the fox terriers ululating for a reason we have not yet identified. We chuckle and wonder what it is they hear at this hour. We think it's the dairy operation on the next street starting up. Possibly a refrigeration unit humming at a higher frequency. (I don't talk a lot about the frequency thing or I will get a physics lesson that may last half an hour.)

This morning we talked about research. How it used to be before the internet. What it was to be a lawyer looking up precedents or, in particular, how it used to be for a young scientist to find out what was already known about some substance or chemical or organism. The library and its endless cards and the people who would go to the stacks and bring back huge carts of books that had been referenced by other books that had previously been brought at your request. Hours and hours looking up footnotes and the sources cited in them.

Now we Google things. We used to go to various web crawlers back in the old days a few years ago in say, 2001. Now, in 2007 we have Google.

My scientist reminded me that he found me by Googleing me before it got to be the giant it now is. He found two of me, in fact, but one of the two of us was dead. The other of us was not, but had a different name now and he had to do some fiddling to connect my old name with my new name. Then he emailed me and the rest is history.

We often spend an hour before my eyes are really open talking about just about anything. We make puns a lot. He sings songs. We tell stories we have not yet shared, and often we tell stories we have already shared, but one or the other of us needs to share it again.

This is a great benefit of retirement that should be mentioned to all people who are feeling anxious what it's like to be "old." When I think of all the times when I jerked myself out of sleep to the tune of an alarm clock (or a "Mommy" voice calling) and my whole body longed to not move from the warm cocoon of covers and the perfect shape of the pillow, -- when I think of that I feel like the richest person in the world to have such a leisurely awakening.

If he talks long enough I stir and then he says "Oh no, are you going to race me to the bathroom?" Usually I say no, because he is a person of routine and check lists. He just LOOKS disorganized, with all his papers and books and notes and tools in stacks of boxes and files. He actually does a very carefully developed set of operations each morning -- the same way each day -- unless I get him discombobulated by stepping ahead of him in line.

Today he is on his second checklist, having worked his way from 7 to 11:30 am. Among the other things he has done, he has served me coffee, orange juice, and vitamins at my computer, and started up the woodstove, and walked the doggies. We have listened to the official weather and the news for a couple of hours, and he has editorialized about several items already.

I suppose it frustrates him that I am a little slow to enthusiasm about the atoms and ohms and protein structures, and such. But it delights him that I am into little animals and art and nature and puns. So it all evens out, because I get frustrated by his thoroughness in explaining to the nth degree the wonders of science, but it delights me that he is into little animals and art and nature and puns. And so many other things which may pop up out of our sleepy heads at daybreak.

Today we will spar a little about how to set up our balled Christmas Tree, which this year is a Thuga (arborvitae). He will want this kind of pedestal, and I will want another kind. We will disagree about how to put the lights on, and how many ornaments. (He likes a lot, I like a few.) Last Christmas I withdrew entirely and told him I didn't care if the tree got decorated at all. He spent my naptime decorating the tree, even though I was in a snit. I gave him a hug and thanked him wholeheartedly for being like that. He really does love me, whether I am snitty or nice. It's good. It's good to be loved even when you have acted snitty.

On Christmas, we will admire the tree and say it's the best one ever, even though it's small, and say that next Christmas we will have an enormous one and put ALL the ornaments on it. And we will talk about how lucky we are to have these things together and to have the time to be thankful for it.

We both have lasted through a lot of knotholes, each in a specialized live and work, to get to here, where we are out to pasture on a social security income and luxuriating in an abundance of un-scheduled time. At least it's un-scheduled for ME. For him, it's full of checklists, and I'm so glad he likes them, because an awful lot of the things he does are especially for me!

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