In my first year of college, I spent most of the weekends at my Grandma’s little place a half hour north of Helsinki. Well, I actually drove up and spent most of the weekends with my cousins, my uncle’s kids, who shared their yard with Grandma and Grandpa.

They were – are – just a couple of years younger, so e had a lot of fun doing stuff that Grandma and Grandpa probably wouldn’t have wanted to do. I say “probably” because we never asked them if they wanted to come out and go ice skating on the gravel road in the winter, or watch MTV or old TV shows on VHS, or drive up to the sports field and kick a soccer ball with us.

And when it was time to go to bed, we didn’t ask them if they, too, wanted to lie in the dark, listen to music, and crack silly jokes – but then again, by then, they had been asleep for five, six hours.

But we did listen to music, acted scenes from those old TV shows we had watched on VHS that day, and made silly impersonations until the other guys weren’t laughing anymore. Not because the stories weren’t funny anymore, but because the others had fallen asleep.

When we first met, Wife was her Grandma’s roommate. Sometimes, though, she decided that she wanted to stay in the city after work, go out with her friends, or for a walk with me, and she’d call her roomie and tell her not to wait up for her.

Her Grandma would say ok, and put the rosehip sherry back into the cupboard, and pack the dinner into a small lunch boxes for Wife to take with her the next day.

And on those nights, Wife would room with her sister who had an apartment in the city. I can imagine that they both thought it was nice and cozy, and I imagine they stayed up late, talking, just like I imagine they had done as little girls when they shared a room.

It wasn’t all my imagination, of course, because the first time Wife told me that she had spent the night at her sister’s, she told me how nice and cozy it had been.

Only, she told me that in the kitchen of the office, while making a sandwich.

“My sister only has that hard bread,” she said.

And while I know now she likes that, at that moment, I felt sorry for her. For both of them. I thought maybe her sister was a poor medical student who could only afford that hard bread, and I didn’t think that she had an apartment in downtown Stockholm. And I felt sorry for Wife who had to make such a sacrifice.

Last night, Wife and her sister went our dancing with a few of their friends, and spent the night at their parents’ apartment halfway between downtown and our houses. I imagine they came home late but not too late to stay up just a little bit later, talking and laughing, in the dark.

And that’s why I made sure that we – as always – had fresh bread at home.