This is an oddity: a Saturday night home alone.

How different it is from my previous sad, lonely, and somewhat self-pitying Saturdays half a year ago. (Though I must confess to a few random stabs of loneliness tonight, but they were fleeting, transient, unsustained.) I am enjoying the solitude and silence (as much silence as a night in this neighborhood can produce, that is - random conversation, bus sounds, the squeal of subway cars as they are put to sleep for the night in the nearby transit depot) and I am grateful for this rare opportunity, unplanned as it was.

(I almost wrote that as �unplanned as I was� which I rather like. My mother always told me that while I may have been unplanned (�a surprise,� she would more likely say), I was never unwanted.)

My room is clean and somehow spacious while still cozy and small. It amazes me sometimes, that my life fits into this smallish room (with some overflow), that I am so contained. I feel burrowed and content. Sometimes I picture living in a much bigger space (and about 95% of the time that is very appealing to me), but I often feel I wouldn�t know what to do with myself in it.

Just about every night that Ben spends over, we turn off the lights and get into bed, my full-size futon with the down mattress cover under us and the down comforter on top of us, and we tuck the covers around our necks and hold each other close (sometimes he pulls me so close it is like he is trying to pull me into him) and kiss and talk and it is as if this small room, and us so tightly contained within it, is all there is. And then we separate some, pull apart, toss the covers about (I either like my feet completely uncovered or completely tucked under the comforter) and find sleep among the slight disarray, and I don�t quite know how to explain my satisfaction at falling into unconsciousness with Ben on one side of me and Laika on the other - nothing has ever felt quite so right.

And in the mornings, we often will wake either other up (usually only to the point of rousing a grunt, a sigh, a few words) to tell each other our dreams before falling back asleep. This morning Ben (barely awake himself, I am sure) gently shook me to tell me �you don�t have to worry about being electrocuted because you�re on the bed and your feet aren�t touching the floor so you�re not grounded, so you won�t be electrocuted.� Ever the electrical engineer, my Ben.

(Later: this morning I woke to tell Ben about my dream of the new bra he bought me, and the A-cup lacy bra he wore under his shirt, and how he grimaced at that thought, even when barely awake! - but his only intelligible (?) response to me was �but you have to wear muffins on your wrists.�)

You must forgive me, of course, for my seemingly perpetual lapses into these domestic details that only I find at all interesting. This is my first time, really, you understand, my first time loving someone and not losing myself, of really feeling healthy and wholesome and sustained. Undiminished. These small matters of falling asleep and waking in such intimacy and tranquility - I find them small miracles. Not to beat the louse comparison into the ground (although I guess that�s exactly what I�m doing), but every night I went to bed with him spurned arguments and cruelties and rejection and this ceaseless assault on my spirit when all I wanted was to rest, my god, I�m surprised the damage wasn�t permanent. (Although I have no doubt that it has marked me, left a scar that no longer impacts me until I am reminded of it, and it is that only, a reminder - not a wound.)

And I am still just trying to wrap myself around this idea, this voice in my head that whispers to me oh yes, this is it. This voice whispered to me in December, as I turned to look at Ben while we sat with his group of friends around a rough-hewn square wooden table in his friend Alex�s loft, and while the volume was soft the message was clear and unequivocal: I could totally marry this man. (Mind you, we hadn�t even exchanged mutual �I love you�s until later that night at home.)

And whoo boy, did I let that �M� word slip? I must admit, I have been having serious wedding fever lately. Me! It�s an interesting mix, actually. I think the acute part of it was sparked by the engagement announcement of a coworker this week (her boyfriend woke her up at six AM on Thursday with a ring and a question - he was so nervous he just couldn�t wait - and again there is that intimacy of the shared bed) and oh, this is cute! I just made the connection that this is the coworker who convinced me to go on my first date with Ben with a much better attitude than I originally had, and a month later I thanked her profusely for her encouragement. But yes, these past couple days especially I�ve been having dreams of wedding dresses and bridesmaids and all of our loved ones celebrating with us and dancing (and this shiksa�s wanting to stomp a glass and dance the hora) and Ben lifting my veil to kiss me (and I don�t know that I would actually use a veil, I would have to think about that, but no matter what its original symbolism, hell, I just find the idea rather erotic. Something about being tantalizingly off-limits for just those moments, an artificial and arbitrary block - I am reminded of the night of my birthday party when Neil and his girlfriend slept on the floor of my bedroom and all night in bed Ben and I could only look but not touch, or tease but not consummate and my god, the tension was incredible and delicious and I woke up later that night to find Ben pressed against me and cupping my breasts and whispering to me oh my god I want you so much I can�t wait I can�t stand it and yet we had to wait - and yeah, that�s sort of the vibe I get from the whole veil thing - dance of the seven veils? - and yes, I�m weird.)

So, yes, there is this acute wedding fever, which focuses on ceremony and celebration and this heady one whirlwind day, but I really am actually quite drawn to the idea of a marriage itself, although to be honest, I can�t quite picture that as clearly yet. The dailyness of it, and I know that marriage takes hard work, but I don�t really know what that means yet. Is this something I can prepare for, study for?

And yeah, I am definitely getting ahead of myself, friends, don�t worry about me. These are thoughts in my head but I am so very aware that we�ve only been together for five months and that there�s still so much to learn about each other and I don�t want to rush even though my not-quite-certainty is getting stronger. It�s not going anywhere, you know what I mean?

And Ben gives little hints that perhaps we�re not on radically different pages. Last night I asked him what I should call his mother when we�re in North Carolina and he said, �well, I wouldn�t call her Mom yet� and I thought �Mom? Yet?? I just wanted to know if I should call her Marion or Ms. So-and-so!� (We agreed I could probably get away without calling her anything at all.) Then later in the evening we were lolling about on the bed (I so rarely set up the futon in its sofa setting; we�re mainly in bed or on bed) and Cops was on and Ben asked me �if for some reason I gave up my scientific career, would you be upset if we had to live in a trailer park?� I replied �not at all, baby, as long as we can get a double wide� and periodically we would joke about how we would furnish it.

Such small stuff, I know, but seems to mean something, perhaps. I am quite content to be patient to find out what that is.

And it strikes me that it is this solitude of mine right now that makes me think that I might not be so crazy for thinking about the big old M word. That even though I had a short period tonight where I missed Ben so much (which is kinda ridiculous, seeing that I last saw him this morning), I no longer feel empty and hollow and needing to be filled. God, it�s been a long time coming, hasn�t it? But I feel like nothing can take it away from me, either. That no matter what happens, even if Ben flakes out and leaves me and I�m grumpily single for the rest of my life, well, I�ve got reserves, I�ve got me.