Antarctica

...

Me and the wife are in the basement. She’s working at her desk, doing the stuff she gets paid to do for her job. I’m paying bills, trying to find this and that, stressing out over the Herculean task of keeping Ship LE afloat for the next 30 days. I feel my pulmonary vein slowly squeezing shut.

Finally, I kick back and throw my hands up. “You know what?”

“What?” she says, typing away on her laptop.

“I can envision myself in a tent in Antarctica.”

She gives me a sideways glance.

“Yeah. I’d be in a tent. Just me. I’d bring – ” I glance behind me at the bookshelf. “This book and this one and this one and this one.” A big grin and a faraway look spread over my face. “It’d be me and a thermometer, and my books. Every week I’d take a temperature reading, and radio it back to headquarters.” I’m excited. “Ahhh. Now that would be contentment. That, believe it or not, would be, for me, peace!”

There’s a long spell of quiet. I look up and see her sideways glance for the first time.

“Oh, and I’d miss you and the girls,” I quickly add.

“You better get those thoughts out of your mind!” she scolds me. “You’re not leaving us high and dry!”

We laugh, of course.

But I’m thinking of riffing through one of my science magazines in search of an arctic landscape. To hang up on the wall behind my desk. If, for nothing else, to tweak my better half.