The perspiration lay between them like the signifier of the thing it was.  Little floodgates opened up between her breasts and on her back.  Her hair was as clammy as her skin.  He pulled her to him tighter than ever at the occurrence of each hot flash – stroking her hair, kissing her head, an arm, her neck.

  They looked good for their ages.  They both dyed their hair, though one couldn’t tell it, and they were in fair, but not good, shape.  Physically, their 35 years together had been good, with fractures and biopsies healing in time and CT scans and MRI’s going to a file instead of a surgeon.  Death did not seem imminent by any means.

  The physicality of getting up and bending down, even getting out of bed, had changed for certain.  They wanted to believe exercise was all they needed to bring the limberness back, and that if they exercised, which they were going to do when the got around to it, they would indeed be able to get down on the floor with the grandchildren and get up again in a more fluid motion.

  Eyeglasses (the $1.99 variety, which they discovered worked almost as well as the $199 kind) were everywhere.  They both took pills once a day – she for thyroid, he for prostate.  They fell asleep during plays and concerts.

  But up until the last year, the changes were so gradual they weren’t noticed, especially by each of them.  The hot flashes had been ignored for years, but lately they were so dramatic and so frequent that time began to be measured by them in an odd manner.

 Her body, asleep beneath the covers, heated up several degrees so suddenly that bed sheets and nightgowns went flying, waking him in the process; rivulets ran down her with such force that it couldn’t be ignored.  Then, he would draw her to him with such tenderness and love that it made her want to live forever -- want to be with him forever.  Life -- beautiful life, with love, hung like a gauze coverlet over them.

  The baptismal waters of old age and death lay between them.  There were sacraments to be taken and sacrifices to be made.  And, one supposed, like puberty, one would make it through.