It’s 3am when his hand finds mine beneath the covers.  He winds his fingers around mine, then pulls me close, wrapping his arms fully around me.  We stay there a long time before he whimpers, “you had an affair.”

I launch from the bed with a mighty “HA!  You had it coming!!!  You SSSSOOOOOOO had it coming!”

Then I crawl back under the covers and squiggle back up against him.  His reaction to the extra-marital affair dream is so much more mature than mine.  When I dream that Bob leaves me for another woman, I wake and swat him with a pillow.  I lay there a few minutes longer, reminding him with the length of my body that I’m here.  His.  Fully.  Then I go downstairs to write.

A few hours later he finds me at my computer after I’ve finished my weekly essay.  He puts the coffee water on as I click open the calendar and begin measuring it up against our to-do list.  He stands in the kitchen, staring at me in shock.  I leave my work in favor of wrapping my arms around his waist.

“And in my dream, I was here, the morning after.  Just like always.  I was making coffee, and you were reading me your next essay.  Like nothing happened.”

“I’m so sorry!”

“And I just kept hating myself.  I just stood here, listening to you read,” like he always does, “thinking, I’m not enough.  I couldn’t be enough for her.”

“That’s not possible.”  I tighten my hug.  

“And his name was Bob, too!”

“Wait.”  I pull away and gaze up at him.  “I left you for another Bob?”

“No.  You didn’t leave me. You just needed another Bob.  You stayed with me.  And him.”

“That’s friggan BRILLIANT.  Could I get another Bob, do you think?”  

Three days later the farmers’ market opens.  We’ve been careening toward opening day on a wing in a prayer, trying to figure out how to get everyone in multiple places at once:  how to get Kate to the market and show her the ropes; how to cover chores and lambing season at the farm; how to run the front of the cafe where Saoirse and Ula are popping in and out for their various summer activities while Mom drives them; how to cover the cafe kitchen where I’m suddenly sole dishwasher, sous chef and cook.  To make matters worse, summer season is kicking in.  People are coming in earlier.  In larger numbers.  That Saturday, Lisa comes in to help me out, but it’s only a matter of minutes before I’m in the weeds.  I’m spooning pancakes on the grill, flipping sausages and turning omelets as dishes pile up beside the sink, wishing I could grow two extra arms, longing for that extra Bob from my husband’s dream.  

I breathe into my work and remind myself that it’s temporary.  That we’ve got a plan.  We’re in this muddle for just a few weeks.  I mutter prayers of gratitude as Dad pulls away from the farm and comes help me catch up with dishes, and my regulars assess the situation and jump into action.  Tom starts talking to new folks, keeping them entertained as my orders pile up.  Jeanne starts bussing dishes.  Ron shouts jokes about the crappy service from his table, his own back-handed way of letting me know It’s all okay.  It’s just something to laugh about.  

But this isn’t the end of it.  Two days later a crew shows up  for the next part of this season’s grand scheme:  the installation of a platform tent in our highest pasture.  After two years of deliberation and one year of experiencing the joy of hosting guests with our farm-to-table AirBnb, we’ve decided to sign on with Tentrr, an AirBnB-style camping program.  It’s all supposed to be simple and straight-forward, but there’s a lot to work out: sorting through what’s included with the tent and how everything works; what has arrived broken and what needs replacement or repair; what we need to provide; what we need to remind prospective guests to bring; writing up information on how to use the farm and the farm trail while navigating the daily maze of fresh pastures and moving electric fencing; figuring out how this is going to work into our daily routine managing the business and running the cafe….

Oh.  And about the cafe.  That’s changing, too.  Any day now we are expecting to hear back from the NYS Liquor authority about our beer and wine license.  We have to meet with Justin from Green Wolf Brewing Company about installing taps and managing inventory.  We’re supposed to go try wines.  Plus, once (if) the license goes into effect, our hours will change.  We’ll go from being open 9-1 on Saturdays to 9-8.  That also means we’ve got to implement a new dinner menu, train in staff and balance that out against the summer Tentrr traffic, the summer AirBnB guests, and the steadily increasing need for more labor on the farm to relieve Kate as she grows that baby.

I’m deep in my slumber a few nights later when Bob appears in my dream.  His brown eyes are wide with guilt.  He’s trying to act normal, but I can tell he’s hiding something.  Is he having an affair?  In this dream I proceed with my daily labors, but keep an eye on him, trying to figure out what he’s up to.  A dark car pulls up beside the house and he tries to slip out without me noticing, a stack of papers in his hand.  I storm out after him. “WHERE are you going?”

He looks out at me with a deer-in-the-headlights gaze.  His chauffeur stares straight ahead.  Then Bob explains.  He visited a booth at the county fair where they were having a “Can you draw Blinky the turtle?” activity.  He drew Blinky the turtle, and he drew the  pond for Blinky, and he even drew some beautiful marsh grasses for him.  The booth organizers were very impressed, and they wanted to interview him for a job.  It turns out the booth was just a cover-up for a high stakes talent scouting mission, and they think Bob’s their man.  Bob confessed in the dream that he worried we weren’t earning enough, and he was going to start working behind my back.

A job.  Bob was sneaking off TO A JOB INTERVIEW???!!!! This was WORSE than an affair!  He was going to leave me with all this mess piling up around us so that he could draw a paycheck?

“You can’t do this to me,” I fling my arms around him the morning after.  “Please!  Promise me you’ll never run off to a job!”

“That’s not a problem, dear,” he consoles me.  “You know I’d only get fired.”  But I’m certain he takes some measure of delight knowing that I want him most here.  As he is.   

And so here we are this morning.  We’ve decided that the only way to learn to use a Tentrr site is to move in and try it.  The kids are fast asleep in the top bunk, Bob slumbers peacefully beneath a wool comforter in the bottom bunk, and I’m out here listening to the first calls of the birds, gazing out over my family’s pastures, soothing myself from this new round of start-up jitters by clacking away on my laptop. Beside me I have a list of things that need repair, lists of information for prospective guests, lists materials we still need to buy, and just for fun, a list of all the birds we’ve seen from our front deck.

And I ponder these two dreams we’ve had in the space of little over a week.  I ponder how they reflect our own anxieties about what we’re facing right now:  lots of little changes, lots of new moving parts.

And I think about how, between the dreams and the changes, we find new chances to hold hands, to lean in and laugh, to thrill in the other person’s presence, to offer each other comfort.  And I realize that, for us, these little challenges are what we’re into.  Maybe some couples swing.  Maybe some get in to whips and chains.  Maybe some fight.  Maybe some forage for mushrooms or build log cabins.  Or have massive gardens.  Maybe some muddle through separate lives, barely speaking.  Maybe some have affairs.  Maybe some throw themselves into fantastic save-the-world causes.  Bob and I do this.  We conceive new ideas about the business adventures that can be had within eight splendidly beautiful, economically squalid square miles of Catskill mountains.  We do a little research, do a little planning, then plunge into this phenomenal nebulous that follows:  this weird period that demands daily scrambling up learning curves, daily re-conception of routines and workflow, constant screw-ups, and then, **poof**  — That exhilarating high when some part of it either goes right, or when something goes so fantastically wrong, that we can celebrate the clarity with which we can leave it behind us.    And then we sit out in the woods, or down by the pond, or up in these pastures, as we are about to do — in the rain, in the snow, in the sunshine — and we drink our coffee or our cocktails and talk about it.  We laugh, tell stories, then scheme about how to make it better.  This, for me, is the joy of marriage to one Bob.  Just one Bob.  But seriously.  Would it be so bad if I could get a second one???

 

Our new Tentrr site is now available.  You can check it out here.