MOM WITHOUT MAKEUP by Andrea Goto

We were all a little more tolerant when we were young.

My grandparents had separate bedrooms on opposite ends of the hallway. When my sister and I visited, we slept in the extra bedroom between theirs–a creepy little room furnished with twin beds draped with nubby white coverlets that we couldn’t sit on. A furry white throw rug that could pass as a flattened Pomeranian lay between us, though we were not allowed to step on it. At night we’d lay still, staring up at the popcorn ceiling, not daring to speak since Grandma wouldn’t tolerate such foolishness after the lights went out. And you didn’t want to upset her because she’d come into the bedroom, eyes flashing, ready to pounce. But that wasn’t the worst of it. She wouldn’t bother to put in her dentures, so her toothless mummy mouth would hiss and flap threats at us.

So we would hold our breath in dangerous silence until our grandparents were fast asleep. From the West end of the ranch-style home, Grandpa snored walrus-like, all thick and satisfying. But from the East came Grandma’s torrential thunder. She even snored angry.

For the longest time I wondered why they didn’t share a bedroom—deaf to their own snoring, I can’t imagine they’d be bothered by each other. Lying there in the museum-quality guest room in reach of my sister if I just outstretched my arm, I imagined how lonely my grandparents must be.

Twenty-some years later, I get it. They weren’t lonely. They were brilliant.

Because here’s the thing about snoring: I may snore on occasion, but it’s like dementia—I don’t notice. Yours, however, is intolerable. I know; you’re sick. Your nose is stuffy. And I get that you don’t know you’re doing it­­, but I’m ticked off just the same.

I jab Ray in the back and hiss, “Ray. You’re snoring.”

“No I’m not. I’m breathing,” he says without opening his eyes.

“You’re snoring. And it’s keeping me awake.”

“Well, now we’re both awake.”

“It’s your fault.”

Because this is going nowhere quickly, I offer the surefire snore solution: “Just turn over, okay?”

Sometimes I try to stop his snoring without waking him. I whisper breathily in his ear: “Tuuuuuurrrrrnnnn ovvvvvvvvvveeeeeerrrr.” But Ray’s never been one to respond to subtleties. So I try to turn him myself. I figure if I can just get enough leverage by inserting my knee under his right glute, he’ll gently roll into a non-snoring side position. Instead, he misinterprets my nudging and turns toward me. Um, no.

Luckily for our marriage, seasonal allergies only strike a few times a year, and the rest of the time Ray is mostly snore-free. Because in my book, snoring is a deal breaker. It’s also why I firmly believe in cohabitating before entering into wedlock. I need full-disclosure, baby. And eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. 

I love my husband, but I also love a bed to myself. I stretch my five appendages out like a starfish (yes, my husband counts my freakishly long neck as a limb). Facedown, I drift into a blissful sleep, only to be impolitely awoken a couple hours later when Ray decides to join me. The lights go on, the toilet flushes with the force of Niagara, and the Sonicare fires up like a swarm of killer bees.

I wonder how this tradition began, this insistence that couples sleep together. When I am asleep, I am not appreciating my husband’s presence. In fact, I’m resenting it. I resent the claw he calls a toenail that unknowingly nicks my ankle. I resent how he lays on top of the covers, while I am egg-rolled tightly into the sheets, shivering. I resent that he wakes up all sunshiny even after five hours of sleep, whereas I wake like the mummified grandma, but with teeth.

OK, my house doesn’t have enough bedrooms to warrant my husband and I sleeping in separate rooms. Yet. But I have tasted the sweetness of solo sleeping. This past year, while we stayed at a hotel in Paris, we put our luggage on the floor, and our tired, travel-weary bodies in our own, separate, queen-sized beds. In the middle of the night I woke to the noise of some kids partying late. I looked over at my husband lying horizontal on his bed, happily coverless. I blissfully stretched my fingers and toes to each corner of my own piece of paradise and thought how much I love and appreciate him—even from across the room.