The Forty Files

Zootopia 2 at 1:13 a.m.

It’s not what I expected to see glowing from my husband’s i-pad in the middle of the night.

But when I rolled over, awake again because apparently this is what this season of life has to offer, these 1 a.m. wakeups that everyone casually labels and dismisses as perimenopause, there it was.

Zootopia 2.

And maybe it is perimenopause. Maybe it’s hormones, or age, or just the quiet hours finally giving my brain space to wander. Women my age tend to assign a name to everything. Every mood, every ache, every moment of restlessness. A phantom era we blame and laugh at in the same breath.

But regardless of the reason I was awake, seeing that, my husband, in the dark, watching an animated sequel, made me pause.

Because it said something. Something small, but also not small at all.

We’ve always been a little bit of opposites.

Somewhere between Judy and, well, not quite Nick, but close enough in spirit. Different energies, different instincts, different ways of moving through the world. And yet, somehow, we’ve always worked.

Some days I try to go back to the beginning. To when we were falling in love.

That electric, almost cinematic version of us.

The fraternity boy and the sorority girl. Late night beers that turned into longer talks. The kind of conversations that felt like they might matter forever. Someone always strumming a guitar in the background, like we were living inside a memory before we even knew it was one.

It was so college. So full of possibility. We were kids, really. Dreaming big, loving even bigger. Fearless in a way you don’t realize is fleeting until it’s gone.

Or maybe not gone. Just changed.

Because here we are.

Still together.

And I love him more now than I ever did then.

But I’ll be honest, I never saw Zootopia 2 at 1:13 a.m. coming.

Of course, I know why he was watching it.

The girls and I had already seen it. We had talked about it, laughed about it, probably replayed parts of it. And he, great girl dad that he is, though he might roll his eyes if I said that out loud, wanted in on it.

He would never admit it, but he’s a full on Disney guy now. An expert, really. Quietly invested.

That’s the thing about him.

He’s complicated soft.

The kind of man who works relentlessly, who carries more than he says, who shows up every single day in ways that don’t always get applause. The kind of man who is steady when everything else feels chaotic.

And lately, everything has felt chaotic.

The house is mid renovation, which is just a polite way of saying it’s a constant, exhausting mess. Nothing is where it belongs. Everything feels slightly undone.

I had this dream, this phase, where I thought maybe I just wouldn’t cook anymore. That we would lean into takeout, into ease, into letting something go.

Turns out, that only works for so long.

Because eventually, everyone is tired of it.

Especially him.

The girls’ schedules have twisted our days into something unrecognizable. Driving here, showing up there, trying to keep all the pieces moving without dropping any. It’s a maze, and we are all just trying to find our way through it.

And in the middle of all of that, he’s still there.

Still showing up.

Still loving.

So yes, I was surprised to see Zootopia 2 lighting up the dark.

But maybe what surprised me more was what it represented.

That even after all these years, all this life, all the noise and mess and exhaustion, there is still this depth.

This quiet, steady kind of love that doesn’t need to announce itself.

The kind that looks like staying up late to watch something your kids loved, just to feel a little closer to them.

The kind that keeps choosing the same people, over and over again, even when everything feels a little frayed.

I think about how we loved when we were young. Fast, loud, all consuming.

And I think about how we love now. Deeper, steadier, more layered than I ever could have imagined.

And maybe that’s the real surprise.

Not the movie.

But the realization that love doesn’t fade or flatten with time.

It expands.

It softens.

It deepens in ways you don’t see coming.

Because who would have thought.

That I would be lying there, in the middle of the night, somewhere between hormones and memory, watching my husband watch an animated sequel.

And feel like I had somehow fallen even harder.