Early thoughts

The warm breeze blows the soft fragrance of the flowers against us as we walk in the night’s calm, and I imagine the scent as a shimmering, silk scarf, wrapped around us as abstractly as moonbeams.
The small, white flowers dot dark bushes along the sidewalk, and if I can smell them this strongly, I know Bernie is positively swimming in scent.
Not that he minds.
After a rainy day, he loves burying his nose in the warm, damp grass, pulling out myriad smells and tastes from it. You can feel his curiosity and memory working to digest those flavors, feel it as he inhales and expands his rib cage and lets out his recognition or confusion in great, shuddering sighs. He’s a pretty amazing dog, and I’m sort of surprised that I even care this much.
That sense of care is the whole reason its 2 am and I’m smelling these flowers and feeling the midnight breezes of Long Beach in the first place- his incessant whining began about the time my head had comfortably fallen into the sleepy spot on the pillow, and I knew that Jay wasn’t going to wake up and take his dog outside.
So Bernie and I are walking together in the quiet, his toenails clicking along rhythmically with my padded soles. We’re in step with each other.
As I was laying in bed wondering why he wouldn’t just shut up already, I kept telling myself this was the exact reason I can’t have kids. They cry out in the night, whine, complain, want to crawl into bed with you, and unless you have the strength to tell them now and let them cry, you end up with a bed full of squirmy child. Or in this case, dog.
But now, after a half hour of this nonsense, now that we’re up and outside and his bladders is all empty, I’m happy to be out here. It’s so calm, such a good atmosphere for mulling over my thoughts. And I’ve been having some pretty serious ones.
Jay and I went to the Farmer’s Market this weekend, picked out a bunch of stuff and spent the next couple of days cooking it up together. I made potato soup when we got home that night, we had the beets yesterday; blackberry crepes sound heavenly for tomorrow. I love doing this sort of thing.
While he was at work yesterday I went to the store and got ribs and greens and stuff for cornbread and dirty rice; I hope I can time it with his return from work tonight. I love doing this sort of thing too. what concerns me about these feelings is that they’re just not quite at the right place, or with the right person. If they are stirred up in me, fine, I can deal with that.
Sure, I could see myself settling down into a life like this- cook, run with the dog in the am., write for the afternoon, greet the honey after work, have dinner before a walk with Bern. It sounds so nice, so… comfortable.
But it’s so unexpected. I haven’t been seeking this sort of comfort, have I? I know that I want it, eventually, like a cushy teaching job at a university, but not right now. So what’s it mean, that I’m going through it right now?
I wouldn’t be staring at the moon and wondering that, right now, if it felt like the real deal and not just a shell of it, right?