It’s the little things........

Sorry everyone, I promised this for Monday and I am a day late. Please forgive me.
Regular readers will know that I have written about how the “Old Salt” and I met and about our wedding and other events in our lives in other posts. If you skip back to posts dated between Nov. 2006 and Mid 2007 you will find many of them. But, for my new readers here is the abridged version.

I was widowed in Dec of 2003 and Frank was divorced the same year. We were both seeking someone to spend the rest of our life with and we had profiles on several singles sites. We had each tried and rejected sites like E-harmony as not being for us. We had both met and dated some nice and not so nice people. We had each been rejected by someone else and had our heart broken. Then came Thanksgiving 2006.

At the precise time that I was sharing a traditional thanksgiving with my Mother and twelve siblings and their families, Frank, was all alone traveling from one coast to the other after a disappointing first face-to-face meeting and entertaining himself on his laptop.

As is tradition in my family, when we assembled to say grace before dinner, we went around the table and each family member mentioned what they were thankful for that year and what they wanted the family to pray for in the coming year. I asked the family to pray that I would meet the man I would marry.

Later that night I checked my email to find my first note from Frank. He had stumbled on my profile on Yahoo Personals during his trip. Frank was not interested in meeting anyone at the time but my profile was very different from the norm and very over the top, so he decided to write and comment on how unique it was. As a result, we began to correspond and I eventually gave him my phone number. By mid December I knew I had met someone very special and could not wait to meet him face to face. So I arranged to take my first ever plane trip that weekend. I called Frank and asked if he was going to be busy that Friday. He said no, so I asked him to meet me at the airport. We spent three days together then I returned home to Missouri. Soon we were making plans for me to quit my job and return to California to be married.

We each knew that we had met someone very special. We knew that we had similar upbringing, thinking, interest and goals. We also knew that we would be very close friends. Frank, had come to the conclusion that love was not as important, at our stage of life, as a great companion. My marriage taught me that romantic love did not last and you had to make the daily decision to continue to love your partner for the marriage to last. So, I was experienced with love found and lost and knew I could choose to love Frank, regardless. I did not require Frank to profess his undying love. He was thoughtful, kind relatively undemanding, and we fit together like we had been a couple for years instead of just a few weeks. We were married on our way back to my home in Missouri.

Since then we have been best friends and travel companions and settled into a comfortable and happy life. I can not speak for Frank but I doubt that either of us gave much thought to the missing love ingredient; until, during the past several months, things began to change, and all because of little things. Little things like his hand on my elbow when crossing a street, or a palm against my back when escorting me through doorways, the water reservoir on my C-pap machine being filled each night without my knowledge, not letting me carry laundry baskets on the stairs or unload groceries from the car, silly excuses for phone calls when apart, finding my drink glass refilled, or small treats left on my worktable. So many little things I can’t begin to name them all.

Yes, it is the little things that seem to have changed everything. The little things that neither of us had ever had before. The little things that began to add up and suddenly burst into one very big thing that we had to call LOVE. I have a feeling that each of us had come to the same conclusion at different times but neither wanted to be the first to actually declare our feelings for fear they would not be reciprocated. So, we were getting very chummy and many PDA’s (personal displays of affection) were sneaking into our daily lives. Those little things were multiplying and becoming not so small.

Then came that one perfect day when ………………so sorry, I think I want to keep that our little secret. But, needless to say we both had to admit that we had fallen in love. It was not fireworks and mad passion but more the deep and lasting feeling that only people who have lived full lives and know true value when it appears are capable of.