morning glory

Our mornings have taken an unintentional - but beautiful - turn.
Neil has so much work out east that he just keeps his body on Ontario time now and he rises before the sun. He uses his morning hours to answer emails and phone calls from our living room couch. He brews the coffee, and lately? The hazelnut fragrance, my expectant discomfort and the promise of his solid, quiet company is enough to drag me out from underneath my blankets so i can enjoy the quiet of morning while our seven children slumber and our eighth hiccups and kicks gently in my womb.
There's usually a half-grin of greeting as i pad through the kitchen. And then the quiet of companionable silence broken spatteringly by brief conversations about the price of oil, the state of politics, a work crisis or any number of situations that are currently unfolding with any one of our little ones.

"What are you singing for that open mic thing at our church?"
"i'm doing a rap."
Silence.
"Cai's gonna add some violin... It's really more of a spoken word..."
Silence. A grin. A cocked brow.

And then slowly we both look back down to our reading... i'm reading an article about euthanasia and he's checking his portfolio online. Comfortable silence... We both know we're an odd match - but God knew what He was doing when he gave us to each other - and our oddness only balances us out in some unexplainable chemical reaction that makes one what was once two separate elements unrelated by composition, state or quality... Marriage just completely blows my mind.
Sometimes he'll wait till the first peeks of cottony bed head and hungry tummies make their way upstairs... and sometimes he gets an urgent phone call and sneaks out before any of them wake...
But these mornings with him home (he has been home more in the last month than any other month in the past year and a half) - have been something of a golden era - which the online dictionary defines as, "an untroubled and prosperous era during which people lived in ideal happiness." - or "a period of great peace".
And my eyes are heavy with sleepy happiness in those early morning moments...
There's no banging and shouting and moaning at my piano... If music is played, it's soft - so as not to wake our little ones. It's not a time for deep conversations - just little snippets of thoughts as we have them... things that connect us as i read and he works and daylight creeps ever nearer.
And who knows how long these precious mornings will be a part of our routine? Travel ever beckons and breaks habits and rituals. New ones are formed and old ones are quickly forgotten and replaced. But for now - in my 35th week of pregnancy, i'll gather each golden bud like a delicate morning glory and breathe deep the fragrance of peace.