when i wake up

(The Proclaimers - 500 Miles)

The Husband and I first started dating when we were sixteen, which is a long, long time ago now. Back in the first flushes of love we had a particularly soppy habit of keeping a note book (I have always been a stationery geek) of quotes and lyrics. I don't really remember how it came about, I think it started when one of us was on holiday and the pure heartache of being separated drove us to writing out love songs. Who knows, clearly sending a simple text message just didn't cut it.

Anyway, one of us would have the notebook and write in it, there was even a point where we would cut out pictures of houses we would like to live in in the future and stick those in, and then after a few days would leave it at the other's house, ready for when they got home. Then they would take up the mantle of documenting romantic extracts and so on and so forth. The ultimate manifestation of teenager in love.

I would think it is still in the loft somewhere. The Husband ventured up there for some cable or other recently and came bounding into the kitchen to ask me if I remembered where I went on our 23 month anniversary (we also did the irritating monthly anniversaries). Unsurprisingly, as we now approach our 150 month anniversary (yes I did just calculate that, and yes I am slightly terrified by it) I alas, could not remember how we had marked the occasion. He happily informed me that we had eaten at the Chinese restaurant, just down the road from where we now live. He was even able to tell me that we had used chopsticks. How? He had found the restaurant card with the date, occasion, and the presumably notable act of our chopstick use, written upon it. I have no idea if he actually found what he went up there for.

So why this trip down a slightly nausea-inducing memory lane? Well today's* writealm prompt is "first thing I see" (*I have realised that I have been looking at the 2013 prompts but I was part way through this post so let's just pretend it's right). I remembered the following quote, from Tony Parson's Man & Wife which I must have studiously copied into the notebook at some point, and which has since remained somewhere in a dusty corner of my mind:

"I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I want her face to be the last thing I see at night and the first thing I see in the morning. I want to watch that face as it changes through the years"

How lovely. How romantic. How so unlike real life. The first thing I see in the morning is usually my phone screen, as I swipe frantically to get the irritating, incessant chirruping of my alarm to stop. I then close my eyes and go back to sleep. The next thing I tend to see is indeed that of my beloved, as The Husband, now fully dressed and ready for work tries to wake me and wish me goodbye.

via godisheart

I wish I could say I cherish that moment, that I appreciate that it is the realisation of my teenage dreams, that I relish being woken by the sight of the one I love. Unfortunately, the first sight of me that The Husband has each morning is generally of me rolling over to his side of the bed, pulling the cover over my head and telling him to have a nice day because I'm just going to have five more minutes. He has long since learnt to let me stay put, any attempts to get me up are futile, and generally end badly. Our morning routine might not be the most romantic, but as I hit the snooze button, face down in The Husband's pillow, I couldn't be happier.