Snoring [jenna]

Some years ago, I heard a tale of a letter to Dear Abby--or some other such advice columnist--that came from a woman wondering rather desperately how to stop her husband snoring. It provoked several months of dialogue between readers and the columnist, until one woman wrote in with the following abrupt statement: "Snoring is the sweetest sound in the world. Ask any widow."

I heard that story long, long ago--before I married, before I met my husband, perhaps even in my childhood. I don't remember when. It stuck with me, however, as such stories will. It added a line to the list of things I do not wish to wait for widowhood to find out.

Some time after our wedding, some all-absorbing novel had convinced me to stay up half the night making sure the characters got to live and be happy. Both my husband and I have become used to falling asleep in the lamplight as the other reads, and he had done so. Despite the draw of the novel, I kept looking over at him as he lay sleeping, shoulders rising and falling gently--my husband, so perfect, so beloved, so admirable.

Then he started to snore.

Snoring is the sweetest sound in the world. The novel lost my attention for a few minutes as I thought that over. Snoring is such an awkward noise, so startlingly loud, a sound no human is proud of making (I should probably point out that my husband doesn't snore that often and rarely keeps me awake with it). It is particularly irritating to the ears and mind. Part of me wanted to reach over and shake him awake enough to stop the snoring, but the rest of me found it so endearing that I wanted to drop the book, snuggle into him, and go to sleep with an arm around him. Not wanting to wake him--and really wanting to know what happened next in the story--I let him snore.

Since then, I find a little joy and gratitude every time he snores, even if I am actually trying to sleep. Whether that is primarily owing to the old story, whether a woman who had to wait till age thirty to marry has an appreciation somewhat comparable to that of the widow, or whether snoring just doesn't affect me as negatively as it would a lighter sleeper, I do not know. Probably all three. I do know that the moment I hear that sound next to me and think of that tale, the arrhythmic rasp becomes something like a lullaby. For his presence, even in its occasionally irksome moments, is always to me a matter of rest.

The snoring moments, the times when his sudden conversation disrupts my ever-important thought processes, and the other however-rare occasions when he somehow manages to come between me and immediate comfort mean so little in comparison with the simple benefit of his life so close to mine, even without reference to the myriad ways he comforts and supports me every day. I know what it means to be alone at night, and in the day too. I dare not forget. The pleasure of his company is too much a great and unmerited and unpossessable gift to be taken for granted.