Latest / My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story / My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 58: The Awake Years

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My Playful Wife — Season 1, Episode 58: The Awake Years · My Playful Wife — A Tender Literary Love Story

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You always talk about these years as you're waking,
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she said. And they were for you. But you should
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know what they were for me, because it's not
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the same word. She looked at the closed notebook.
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For me they weren't awaking. My Playful Wife
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Episode 58 The Awake Years Written by Mia On
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a Tuesday in the rains, with nothing whatsoever
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special about it, I sat at the desk by the window
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and wrote the day's one true thing and came,
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in the middle of a sentence, to the bottom of
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the last page and found that the fifth notebook
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was full. There was no more paper. I had reached
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the back cover. I sat with the pen still touching
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the final line. a sentence about the particular
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way Celonie had stood in the kitchen doorway
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that evening drying her hands, and I understood
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that the sentence would have to end there, because
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the book had ended, and that something else,
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larger than the sentence, had ended with it.
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Five notebooks now, for in the drawer below,
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and this fifth in my hand, full at last, Every
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page of it written, including the ones I had
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left blank two years ago against whatever was
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coming, which had turned out to be my own near
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sleep, and had caught me, and had been written
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on after all. I closed it slowly, and I sat for
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a long while in the lamplight, not writing, because
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there was nothing left to write it in, and looked
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at the whole shelf of what these years had become.
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Five books, one marriage, and somewhere in the
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region of three thousand evenings of a man teaching
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himself, and then re -teaching himself, and then
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teaching himself again, how to see the woman
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he had married. Three thousand evenings. I did
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the arithmetic once, and then wished I had not,
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because the number cuts both ways. It is the
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measure of how faithfully I have looked, and
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at the same time the measure of how much there
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had been to make up for. The years before the
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books began when I looked at nothing and wrote
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nothing down, and let the evenings pass unseen
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by the hundred. A life is mostly evenings, in
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the end. Not the big days, the weddings and the
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funerals and the dramatic mornings, but the small,
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unphotographed evenings, thousands of them, a
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wife in a doorway drying her hands, and whether
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you spend those awake or asleep is very nearly
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the whole of whether you were alive at all. The
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notebooks were only ever a way of refusing to
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let the evenings go by unwitnessed. Five books
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of saved evenings. It is not nothing to have
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saved them. The four notebooks in the drawer
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are the waking. I have always known that. They
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are loud books, frightened books, full of a man
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clawing up out of a sleep he had nearly died
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in. and they have the violence of any rescue
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about them. The gasping, the gratitude, the shame,
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the disbelief that the thing had been there in
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front of him the whole time. You can hear it
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in the handwriting itself. In those four books,
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if you ever go back and look, the way the pen
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bites into the paper, The way the lines run downhill
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and crowd the margins. The physical signature
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of a man writing as though his life depended
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on getting it down before he lost it again, which
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it did. I cannot read those four notebooks now
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without flinching slightly. The way you flinch
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at an old photograph of yourself caught mid -fall.
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They are the record of an emergency. And like
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all records of emergencies, they are gripping
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and terrible and not. In the end, the kind of
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thing you would wish on anyone, because the price
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of all that gasping gratitude was the years of
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sleep that had made it necessary in the first
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place. Nobody should have to wake the way I woke,
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but almost everybody I have slowly come to think
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is asleep. But the fifth, the fifth is something
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else, and I understood, holding it full and closed,
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that the fifth had been the harder book by far,
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and that almost no one ever writes it. The fifth
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notebook is the Awake Years. It is the book of
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what happens after the rescue, when the drama
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has drained away and there is no catastrophe
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left to keep your eyes open for you, and the
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whole task becomes the unspectacular one of simply
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not lying back down. It has no rescues in it.
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It has an empire refused for the sake of staying
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the right size. It has a festival and the order
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of the dias handed to a girl. It has a week I
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fell asleep on my own life and a blank page that
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woke me. It has a room full of sleeping marriages
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I learned at last to pity instead of judge. It
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has an old man dead in his bed at the far end
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of a long table and his wife awake beside him.
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It has no fireworks. It is the quietest of the
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five books and the truest and the one I am proudest
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of because anyone can stay awake during an emergency.
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The fifth notebook is the record of staying awake
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when there was no emergency at all, which is
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the only achievement in a marriage that actually
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counts, and the one almost nobody manages. I
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have watched for it, these years, the way you
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watch for a rare bird. And it is rare. The long
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marriages are common enough. You see them everywhere.
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The couples who have lasted, and the world congratulates
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them on the lasting as though duration itself
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were the achievement. But the awake long marriages,
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the ones where two people are still genuinely
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seeing each other after the spark has gone and
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the children have gone, and the drama has gone,
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those I can count on one hand across everyone
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I know. The old couple at the dinner had been
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one. Now they're half of one, the lit half grieving.
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It is the rarest thing human beings attempt,
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and the least celebrated, because from the outside
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it looks identical to the common kind, and only
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the two people inside it ever know the difference
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between a marriage that merely lasted and a marriage
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that stayed awake. I did not want to close it.
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That was the first feeling, the old one, the
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same reluctance I had felt two years before when
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I first saw the pages running out. as though
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closing the book might close something else,
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might be a small rehearsal for the larger closing
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still to come. But I have learned the difference
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now between a thing ending and a thing being
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full, and they are not the same, though they
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feel alike in the hand. A full notebook has not
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ended. It has only run out of room to hold what
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is still, every day, happening. The marriage
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was not over, because the book that recorded
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it was. There would be a sixth notebook and a
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seventh. I had understood that already, in the
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dark, the night the blank pages caught me, that
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I will be filling these books the week I die,
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that the practice has no last page even when
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the notebook does. So the full fifth was not
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a tombstone. It was just a volume, complete.
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The way a stretch of road is complete when you
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reach the next town, which is not the end of
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the journey, but only a good place to stand for
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a moment and look back at the distance you have
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come before you go on. I started from very far
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down, from a marriage gone gray, and a wife going
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quietly unseen, and a man who would have told
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you, with perfect sincerity, that everything
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was fine. To stand here now. five notebooks up
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the road, and see that first gray morning so
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small and so far below me is its own quiet reward,
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and I let myself have it for one evening, the
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rare and faintly guilty pleasure of noticing
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that you have, against all the odds, come a very
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long way. Saloni found me with a closed book
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in my lap and the new dark of having nowhere
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to write, and she sat on the arm of the chair,
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and I told her it was full, all five of them
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now, and she was quiet a moment, and then she
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said the thing that gave me the whole of the
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awake years back from her side of them, which
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I had never properly thought to ask for. You
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always talk about these years as you're waking,
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she said, and they were for you. But you should
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know what they were for me, because it's not
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the same word. She looked at the closed notebook.
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For me, they weren't awaking. I was already awake.
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I'd been awake the whole time alone. For years.
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Watching you sleep. Being the only lit window
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in our own house. You know all this. I've told
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you. For me, these years weren't me waking up.
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They were me finally being met. After years of
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doing the looking by myself into a face that
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wasn't looking back, suddenly there was someone
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looking back. That's what your five notebooks
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actually are from where I sit. They're not the
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record of you learning to see me. They're the
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record of me stopping being alone in my own marriage.
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You think you woke up. From here, it just felt
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like you finally arrived. Like I'd been keeping
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the lamp lit for years in an empty room, and
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one ordinary evening I looked up, and you were
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in the doorway, and you'd been on your way the
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whole time, and you finally, finally got here.
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And I could not say anything to that, because
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it reordered all five books at a stroke, turned
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my whole heroic private story of waking into
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something humbler and better. The story of a
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man who had kept a patient woman waiting in a
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lit room for years and had, at long last, walked
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in. So I only took her hand, the older hand,
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and held it against my face, and we sat in the
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lamplight with the full notebook and the rain.
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Two people who had, by very different roads,
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ended up awake in the same room at, the same
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time which is the whole and entire prize and
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the rarest thing on earth. I have stopped being
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surprised over these years by how much of what
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she says corrects what I think I already know.
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I had told the story of these years a hundred
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times inside my own head, and always as a story
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about me. My sleep, my waking, my discipline,
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my notebooks. It took her one quiet sentence
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on the arm of a chair to show me it had been.
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All along, at least as much a story about her
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waiting, her patience, her years of looking steadily
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into a face that gave her nothing back. The awake
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marriage is partly just this. The permanent humbling
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of discovering that your own version of the shared
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story was always only half of it, and almost
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never the more important half. We went out the
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next morning. in the wet, and bought the sixth
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notebook. I had thought to do it alone. It had
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always been a private errand, the buying of a
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new book. But Saloni put on her sandals and said
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she was coming, that if she was going to be the
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subject of a sixth volume, she would at least
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help choose what it looked like. And so we went
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together to the small stationers near the market,
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the two of us under one umbrella, and stood at
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the rack while the rain came down outside, and
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chose it. Nothing special. A plain dark cloth
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-bound notebook, the same kind as always, blank,
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its pages faintly ruled, smelling of new paper
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and possibility, and absolutely nothing yet written.
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She handed it to me at the counter. Here, she
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said. Volume 6. Try to make me interesting. And
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I paid for it. And we walked home under the one
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umbrella, and I carried the blank book against
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my chest out of the rain the way you carry anything
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that does not yet have any words in it but is
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going to. There is a particular tenderness I
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feel toward a blank notebook that I have never
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been able to explain to anyone, and that the
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sixth one, carried home in the wet, brought up
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in me again as sharp as ever. It is the tenderness
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you feel toward anything that is all promise
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and no performance yet. Anything standing at
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its own clean beginning. A child. A first morning.
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An unplanted field. The book did not know what
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it would hold. Neither did I. It might hold ordinary
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years. The good kind I had spent the whole fifth
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book learning to stay awake through. It might
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hold something much harder. The long view had
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taught me that the blank pages ahead were not
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guaranteed to be gentle ones. But it would hold
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something. and I would be awake for whatever
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it turned out to be, and I would write it down.
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That was the whole of the vow, renewed, in a
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stationer's, in the rain. I did not write in
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it that night. I only opened it to the first
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clean page and looked at it for a while, the
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white, unwritten future of it, and then closed
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it again and set it on the desk beside the full
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fifth, the done and the not yet begun side by
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side in the lamplight. and went to bed. There
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was no hurry. The sixth notebook would fill the
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way the others had, one true thing at a time,
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on the ordinary evenings, for as long as I was
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given ordinary evenings to write them in. The
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blank book was not a burden. It was the most
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hopeful object I owned, proof that I intended
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to keep looking, that I was betting on more years
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to see her in. that I had bought in advance,
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the pages to hold a future I could not see and
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chose anyway. That, in the end, is the only kind
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of faith I have ever been able to manage, not
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a belief that the future will be good, which
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I cannot honestly hold, having seen the old man
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dead in his bed, but a plain decision to show
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up for the future, whatever it turns out to be.
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Buying the blank book is an act of faith of exactly
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that modest, durable kind. It does not predict.
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It does not ensure. It simply says, I intend
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to be here, awake, with my pen, for as much of
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whatever comes as I am given to witness. People
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look for grander faiths than that, and mostly
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do not find them. I have made my peace with the
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small one. A blank book and the honest intention
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to fill it, it turns out, is enough religion
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for a whole life. I wrote the last entry of the
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awake years on the very last line of the fifth
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notebook, the one I had stopped in the middle
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of, and I let it stand as the volumes end. That
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the awake years were the best of my life, and
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that they were the best precisely because I had
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nearly missed them, had spent the first half
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of my marriage asleep through years exactly as
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good, which I will never get back, and was never
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even present for. The waking was the more dramatic
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story. People like the waking. It has a shape,
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a fall, and a rescue. But the awake years are
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the better story, and the harder one, and the
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one worth giving a life to. The long, unspectacular
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business of keeping your eyes open on an ordinary
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face across an ordinary table for year after
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year after year, refusing the sleep that is always
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always available, that comes dressed as comfort
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on the good weeks and will take you the moment
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you believe you have earned a rest. I did not
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earn a rest. There is no rest. There is only
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the looking, daily, until the looking becomes
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the love and the love becomes the life, and then
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one ordinary Tuesday and the reins and notebook
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fills up and you realize you have somehow, against
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all the odds and all your own worst sleeping
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habits, become a man who stayed awake. Not finished.
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Never finished. Just awake. Still, this far in,
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with a blank book bought and waiting. I read
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the whole entry back once, which I almost never
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do, and let it stand, because it was as true
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as I knew how to make it, and because the book
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was full, and there was no room left to improve
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it even if I had wanted to. That is one mercy
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of a full notebook. It stops your fiddling. The
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words on the last line. are the words that get
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to stay. And these would do. They were not the
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cleverest words in the five books, but they were
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honest, written by a man who had been asleep
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and was now awake and knew exactly what each
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of those was worth. And I could ask no more of
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a closing line than that it be true and that
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I be willing to be measured by it. I was willing.
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I closed the fifth notebook for the last time.
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Then the working line, the last in the fifth
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book, written small at the very foot of the page,
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Saloni asleep, the new notebook blank on the
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desk, the rain on the glass. These are the awake
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years, and they are not a destination. They are
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a discipline you never graduate from and a road
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that has no town at its end, only the next stretch
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and the next. Do not wait to arrive. You will
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not arrive. Arriving is the sleep. Buy the next
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blank book before you have finished the last
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one and keep looking at the one ordinary face
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you chose on the good days especially when nothing
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is wrong and everything in you wants to close
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your eyes and rest in the warm because the rest
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is the sleep and the sleep is the only real death
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and the looking, the daily difficult chosen looking
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is the only thing any of us was ever really given
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to do with our short awake while in the light.
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Stay. Look. Begin the next book. I kept the pen.
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The fifth notebook was full and the sixth was
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blank. And between them, in the lamplight, lay
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the whole of a life that had been asleep and
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was now, for as long as it lasted, awake. And
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I turned off the lamp and lay down beside the
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woman who had waited in the lit room until I
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arrived. And I did not write down the day's last
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true thing, because there was no longer any page
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for it. But I found it anyway, in the dark, looking
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at her, that I would buy a hundred blank notebooks
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if I were given the years to fill them, and that
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I would spend every one of those years exactly
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here, awake, beside her, looking for as long
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as the light held. End of Volume 2 My Playful
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Wife Thank you for reading The Awake Years. Volume
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1 was the story of a man waking up. Volume 2
19:15
was the harder, quieter story of staying awake.
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The years with no catastrophe to do the work
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for him. Only the daily choosing. The near relapse
19:25
survived. The looking handed on. The long view
19:29
faced. Volume 3 turns toward what comes asking
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at the door of a settled, awake life. A new room
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to fill. Larger than the two of them, and the
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question of whether two people who taught themselves
19:42
to see each other can keep their eyes open through
19:45
a season bigger than any they have weathered
19:48
yet. Thank you for being here for all of it.
19:51
The lamp is still lit. To be continued in episode
20:08
episode 58 of My Playful Wife. If this story
20:12
is staying with you, the next episode is already
20:16
waiting. Subscribe so you don't miss it. The
20:19
complete book is on Amazon and early episodes
20:22
plus bonus chapters are on my Patreon. Links
20:25
are in the description. Thank you for listening.