It's the little things that make or break a relationship, not the big dramatic moments you tend to remember for much longer. Like when he comes back from the store and brings back three bags of the cheese-flavored shrimp chips I've been searching for, and how I toss in my basket a can of pistachio nuts for him even if I just ran into the store to buy a five-pack of hangers.
It's the way he makes that tiny hand gesture that says "watch your step" when we take walks at night and he sees something that I might possibly trip on because he knows I'm practically blind in the dark, and clumsy to boot. And how I'll suddenly notice a slight shift in his gait that tells me the pain in his hip is acting up again and I'll matter-of-factly suggest we now head for home. It's the way I tug on his shirt sleeve whenever I see an old couple hand-in-hand, and how he then pulls mine and I wrap my fingers around his.
It's how he silently opens the door to the balcony and steps out to water my wilting plants, which I haven't noticed because I was too busy reading. And how he tells me to take the car parked outside to run my errands because the one in the garage is low on gas -- even if he could just as easily tell me to take that one instead and get it refueled since I'm out and about anyway. It's also how he never seems to tell me that I look pretty even when I'm feeling particularly so. Or how he starts driving like a lunatic when he gets road rage as I sit beside him, utterly terrified.
It's how I can keep him waiting for half an hour or more because I took too long to start getting ready. And how I can ignore him for hours while I'm on the computer blogging or checking Facebook or searching for new music to fall in love with. But it's also how I say that it's OK for him to join a last-minute golf game instead of doing what we originally planned to do because I know he truly feels guilty about bailing on me. And how I tell him to take his time and have fun, even if I'm now wondering what to do with myself.
Sometimes it seems that our marriage is predicated on moments; on moments of touching kindness, simple consideration, exquisite love, benign neglect, unreasonable pettiness, and seething anger. At times everything seems to depend on a single act or a word -- that the right or wrong one will tip the balance and cause both of us to either plummet or soar. And yet what keeps us going, even if we sometimes forget why we do and how we do it, is that we continue to have all these moments together. Because when you string them all up from one end to another what you end up with is two interconnected strands, each one representing a life touched by the other.
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