Before I Sleep

Through a sleep-condensed brain, this phrase came to me: "Late at night a big old house gets lonely." I knew why I was thinking those words, but I was stuck on the source. My wife stirred and I mumbled them to her, and at that moment, we both arrived at the same conclusion. It was the Eagles who sang those words in a little ditty called "Lyin' Eyes."
But it wasn't the context of the song that was keeping my mind wandering. I had inadvertently pushed the fast forward button and I was imagining a home for just the two of us. Twelve years ago, that was the case, after all. Though she was heavy with child, there were only two residents of this house when we first moved in. We had to wait for the baby. Then we had to wait for the dog. The alarm clock was the thing that got me out of bed back in those days. Or my own neurotic impulses.
My son had taken our dog along to his friend's house for a sleepover. He continues to establish dominance over his own homesickness demon, and his parents are the beneficiaries of his expanding world. However, as a number of our friends have suggested, once he gets comfortable with the notion of spending the night away from home, we might not see that much of him. Without the dog to pad noisily across our wood floors or chase rabbits in her sleep, there wasn't much to keep me from my own eight hours of slumber, aside from the aforementioned neurotic impulses.
It's a lot of house for just two people when they're hanging out in one corner of one room and laying very still. I listened for the refrigerator and the pendulums of our analog clocks. I listened to the deep rhythm of my wife as she drifted away on her own night journey. And that's when I thought of that next line: "I guess ev'ry form of refuge has its price." Then I was off on my own dream time.