
"Seeing this photo brought my mind to sleeping in bed with my wife Sheila. As she was born in the Chinese Year of the Monkey, I have had four and a half years practice of sleeping next to one. Incidently, if this image is reflective of me and Sheila asleep, I'm the fatter one.
I often place little credence to a woman's assertion that size matters, but take it from me, it matters in bed. The bigger the bed is, the more room one has to move around. Very few married couples start off in bed sleeping apart and wake up in each other's arms, and even those who do go to sleep in each other's arms, normally wake up kissing backsides. Have you ever wondered how rock hard a woman's small derriere is compared to the much larger, and might I add, flabbier backside of a mans? What's all that about then?
They say that all of us dream, but not everyone remembers having dreamt. Ever since childhood and the development of a vivid imagination, I have dreamt one kind of dream and another. I still dream vividly today and often awake with the theme of a new story to write or having solved a puzzle in one I am currently writing.
As a child, the dreams I had might replay part of a western film I'd seen earlier that night and I'd wake up in a sweat with a Sioux arrow through my throat. In my teens I would frequently dream of more romantic stuff and by the time I had passed the age of majority, I dare not tell the priest in the monthly confessional box of the depravity of some of my nightly visions. Besides, I accept that in the eyes of the Catholic Church one can be guilty for having certain unwholesome thoughts during the light of day, but surely even God appreciates that one cannot be held accountable for the content of one's dreams; being in deep in sleep during the darkness of night and thereby out of control as to what one is thinking during moments of unconsciousness.
During the years in between my marriages, when I lay down in bed alone, I soon realised that being single sucks. For around two years between my last marriage and my marriage to Sheila, I travelled the country far and wide meeting up with many women in similar circumstances to myself. Indeed, there was a period when I forgot that I was a man in his mid-sixties who'd tricked his aging body (which had incurred two severe heart attacks seven years earlier) to forget its limitations also. In fact, it is highly plausible that had I not met my wife Sheila when I did and thereby put a stop to my galavanting far and wide, I would not be alive now to have contracted the terminal illness I have today!
Meeting, loving and marrying Sheila has provided me with a much greater dimension as to how I now view bed and going to sleep on a night. I recall the bitter contrast of earlier years when my marriage was breaking down, when bed became a prison from which there'd be no release until the following morning and the sentence was spent. I have since rediscovered the many pleasures of bed, particularly when you are in bed beside the one you love.
Today I read, drink tea, talk with my partner about our day, make love, kiss, cuddle, hold hands and sleep in bed. We even scratch backs from time to time and give shoulder massages in turn. The main thing, is that the pressure to either do this or not do that is off and by golly, it makes a tremendous difference! I have found love and physical attraction in a marriage before, but now I enjoy both of these aspects, along with a deep sense of spirituality that is new to my marriage. Before marriage our relationship tended to be all passion and it is only into the marriage after it has settled that we gradually became friends and soul mates in our roles as man and wife.
Finally, before I end this post I must deal with those two human traits that all know of in private, but few dare speak of in public. I refer to those less pleasant aspects of our behaviour both men and women are prone to when fast asleep; snoring and flatulance. Contrary to my wife's assertion and no doubt yours also, let me tell you that both man and woman snore and fart in equal measure. Admittedly the vast majority of women do it in much quieter tone than the men; most females do it in softness, some through the gentle intermittent squeezes of the buttocks, but all women try to do it in secret as is their nature.
Let's face it chaps, the more gentle snoring of women has never bothered us unduly, but however faint a fart may be, a fart's still a fart and smells no sweeter from whence it came!" William Forde: February 17th, 2015.