The Smell of Coffee and French Toast

If I were to set the scene for my perfect valentine’s day, I might’ve started with the weather. It would be sunny and warm enough for us to have a picnic and to maybe stargaze if the clouds cleared (Unfortunately, it would take a large electrical outage in our area to reduce the light pollution enough for the stars to be visible. Maybe this fantasy would also need to take place in a world where we lived in a more rural area).

Considering our current … global situation I might’ve even wished to forgo the outdoor activities for a night out in the city instead. We would have gone to our favorite bar and spent the evening with some of our friends. We had spent so much time alone together, with no kids or roommates, that the company would have been such a treat. This fantasy would have been more so for my husband than for me; I fear the isolation chipped away a part of him that was only soothed by the company of others.

Instead of these things, my truest fantasy would be to wake up to the smell of coffee and French toast and know that he was waiting for me in the kitchen. Or it would be me making breakfast and I could hear him walk up behind me to drape himself over my back to watch me cook. We spent so much time in quarantine together that it seemed like we didn’t need the words anymore, I could press my head back against his and he would just know, but I would say them anyway.

My day would be spent at his side and I would get to listen to him talk for hours; he would have gone back to teaching in person and he would have had so much to say about his students. We would avoid the news with a nature documentary playing in the background. The evening would be quiet, and we would spend the night curled in each other’s arms.

Now if I could, I would tell him – over and over – what he meant to me. I would tell him that it was unbearable to live without my heart by my side, that I hated that he had left me alone. I would tell him that as hard as those days in quarantine were, I never regretted getting to spend them with him.