Groundhog Day

He woke to the sound of a closing drawer. His wife was awake and active, and he knew there was no going back to sleep. He was up.

“You don’t have to do that, you know. Tomorrow it’s just going to be back the way it was.”

She shrugged. “I was up.”

He watched her as she meticulously folded a few pairs of his briefs and placed them in the top drawer the way he liked them. She seemed on edge. Tired but wired. Was she sad? Admittedly he had never been great at reading a woman’s body language. Those subtle cues that women would argue weren’t so subtle were lost on him most of the time. But this he did know, whenever she was like this, tread carefully.

“Are you mad?” he asked. She looked at him, and her eyes narrowed. Yikes. Whatever he did next was crucial. Like a skilled surgeon, he was calculated and slow. He sat up and reached for her. He felt her soften as he pulled her back into the bed, wrapping them under the covers together.

“Did you sleep at all?”

She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against his hand as he caressed her there.

“No. I wanted to see what would happen.”

“And?”

She sighed and propped herself up on her elbow. “And nothing. It obviously doesn’t happen at midnight. I needed to know when it was going to happen. I kept myself awake by cleaning up the living room. I brought up a load of laundry and folded it while I was watching that show I liked. Do you remember the one I told you the other day? The one with the guy who becomes president after the capitol building blew up. Anyway, I remember looking at my phone to check the time, and it was 4:21. I decided to grab a fruit snack, and when I came back into the living room, everything was back the way it was. No basket of laundry and toys everywhere. I rechecked the time. 4:23.”

“Hmm” was all he could manage as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Did you check the camera?”

“Yes, but there is no camera video because it didn’t happen anymore. Do you get it? Once everything resets, the videos don’t exist anymore.”

He watched her trace invisible lines on the bedsheet. He noticed the delicate curve of her face. The soft sprinkling of tiny freckles at the tops of her cheeks. Something you only saw if you were granted the privilege of being close to her. There were thin lines on her forehead now. Permanent fixtures from years of worry that he knew all too well. The kind of worry you have while you are stroking the head of your sick child imaging the worst. The kind of worry you have when you are living paycheck to paycheck and force yourself to check your account balance.

“And you’re sad?” he asked, covering her hand gently.

She was still looking down, unable to meet his eyes. He felt her take a staggered breath and saw her lip quiver slightly. He loved this about her. The way she convinced herself, she could be strong and not cry, but the tears would come. They always did, and he knew she would silently promise herself that next time she would be strong. He never told her otherwise.

“Did we die?”, she asked meeting his eyes so suddenly that it almost startled him.

The tears came to her pleading eyes and slowly rolled down her cheeks. She needed an answer from him. She would take his thoughts and words as gospel as she had from the very beginning. Initially, this did wonders for his ego, but over the years, the position as her personal Great and Powerful OZ had become a source of anxiety. But this was her greatest need from him, even though it went unspoken these 14 years, and he always came through. This time was not going to be any different.

“Does it matter?” he asked gently. What he meant was, was this situation in which they found themselves bad? The more he thought about it, the better it had seemed. “Think about it. We essentially have no worries. We don’t have to pay bills anymore; we don’t have to go to work; it doesn’t matter what we spend from the account or on the credit cards. We can do whatever we want. We have virtually unlimited time. This is our dream come true. We have time.”

He had not let her down. Her features began to soften and relax, but only for a moment before tensing up again. “But how do we know how long this will last? Will we age? Will our children age? What happens if we spend every penny and hop on a flight to Peru? Will we wake up here? What happens if it all ends?”

He pulled her into his arms and returned them both to their cozy blanket cocoon. He kissed her lightly and tangled his finger in a strand of her wild curly mane hair. Then the familiar sound they heard every morning at 8:03 precisely, 2 sets of little feet hurrying down the hall to their room. The sound, god willing, they would hear for eternity. He looked her in her eyes.

“It won’t.” he stated matter of fact.

She smiled, and this, he thought, was heaven.