Home is where my husband is. My second husband, Herb: the one I met when I was a divorcee in my 40s, with two teenage kids. I touch the whiskery wrinkles radiating from the corners of his wise, ancient elephant eyes and smell the indefinable but tantalizing aroma that comes up from the core of his being through the pliable, warm shell of his skin. I nuzzle against his neck, sniffing it in. When we lie down, I rest my head on his chest. He strokes my head and arms and holds me. His “good night” gently rumbles, vibrating the strings of my heart. Unlike me, he falls asleep effortlessly, immediately, guiltlessly. His quiet breaths and soft moans become my long, slow lullaby.

​

Herb’s waters are still, deep, and sometimes well concealed, for he is a historian and philosopher, and his is primarily a world of ideas. The bookshelves lining his upstairs study are so overcrowded with heavy tomes that we hired a contractor to reinforce the dining room ceiling below. Obscuring the entire surface of his massive desk top are philosophy and ethics articles, medical journal abstracts, sociological and political analyses, and more law review articles than I have read in my entire legal career. The London, Jewish and New York Reviews of Books, The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Jacobin, Science, Wired and Nature Magazines take up much of the dining table real estate and are stacked high on a couple of the chairs beside it. On the living room coffee table sit a tractate of the Talmud and several books of Biblical commentaries. Flyers from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, The Centre for Alternative Technology, and—for good measure—the CATO Institute are fanned out on the kitchen counters. And conveniently atop Herb’s bedside table is a little light bedtime reading. A discourse on the symbolism of a single painting by Van Eyck, for example, and another on the history of the color black. A book of Elizabethan poetry. The latest translation of Aristotle.

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And a study of public toilets.

​

I do not share or fully understand Herb’s passions. But he understands me. He laughs, gently, at my foibles and at his own. He reassures me when I question myself. “I think you need a hug,” he says. Or “How about a cup of tea and a little massage?” I readily accept and he hastens to make me comfortable.

​

He needs very little and asks for even less. Whatever I offer or give, he appreciates; what I don’t, he accepts. He does not begrudge me my late, slow wakings and solitary mornings or my time away with family or friends. He is content standing or pacing and reading, trying out new recipes in the kitchen, sawing and sanding in his basement carpentry workshop. When I return, wherever he may be, he greets me with a childlike delight.

 

*

 

One evening, Herb accompanies me to a class in guided meditation. He does not need it; I do. Despite his modeling, I am a tangle of regrets and worries, should-haves and to-dos. I need to find my center.

 

The leader asks us to close our eyes and visualize a place we have felt completely at peace. I quickly settle on the memory of lying next to Herb in bed, my head on his chest, his arms embracing me, in the afterglow of sex. My eyes still closed, I smile privately, then inhale and exhale slowly, as the teacher instructs. I am transported to Nirvana. I am bliss incarnate.

 

Afterwards, the leader asks for volunteers to share the places they envisioned. One woman says, “I imagined the beach where my family vacationed when I was young. The whoosh of the waves rolling in on the sand.” Another talks about her grandmother’s lakeside cottage, and still another, a brook. Everyone, it seems, has been meditating to a G-rated image of a childhood summer by water’s edge.

 

I do not raise my hand. Neither does Herb.

 

On our way to the car, I ask Herb what he was visualizing. He turns to me. A slow smile spreads across his face. “The reading room of the British Museum,” he says dreamily.

 

My heart sinks. We walk the rest of the way in silence.

 

“Why: what about you?” he asks after he begins driving.

 

“I don’t want to tell you,” I answer.

 

“Okay,” he says. He’s like that: respectful.

 

But I know he can feel me stewing.

 

“You can tell me,” he says.

 

“No: it’s embarrassing,” I say. “Pathetic, even.”

 

“I doubt that,” he says. He pulls into our driveway, opens the door to our house.

 

“So?” he asks as we walk inside.

 

I spill it out. Herb laughs. Not at me, it is clear: at the disconnect, and mostly at himself. He doesn’t think I’m pathetic at all; he feels badly for hurting my feelings. He wonders if this latest gaffe has confirmed his fear, or mine, that he is a secret Vulcan, only posing as a human being.

 

“I’m never going to live this down, am I?” he asks.

 

“No,” I admit. And then I laugh, too.

 

It is five years later now and we are still laughing. Herb’s home is in a reading room, inside the pages of a book. 

 

And my home is with Herb.