Dear Friends,
Okay, it may be a few days after Valentine’s Day, but I’m keeping the “Coffee Cup” video up until next week, because I loved the responses it has received so far and I’m hoping for more. I laughed and sighed and even got a lump in my throat just reading the first seven COMMENTS.
All seven, Betty, Sara, Kathy, Linda, Margaret, Theresa, and “cappricioso” had a “Cup of Coffee” to share about their marriage. Everything from electric car heaters to an emergency flashlight “just in case” to simple questions like “when will you be home?”
This morning Jon and I were shopping in a wonderfully cozy little gift shop near Yosemite called Chocolate Soup in Mariposa, California. Terrific variety, wonderful folks behind the counter, lots of fun, frilly things that make husbands shiver and look for the nearest exit. But Jon soldiered on through the scented soaps and the hanging candle holders and acted as though he had never, ever been dragged through one of these places before. God bless him.

And God did bless him later with a great steak and a baked potato a couple of hours later. But I forgot to bless him. I mean, as I read Betty Bitzer’s memories of her husband, I was moved by her last words of gratitude, knowing that even though her precious husband has been gone now for three years, she is comforted knowing that HE knew how much he was loved and cherished.
I realized I hadn’t remembered to thank Jon for his quiet “shopping patience.” I wanted him to know what it meant to me. So I stopped in the middle of writing this message tonight to tell him so. And he smiled and said how happy it made him to see me having fun.
Now I wish I had bought that little sign in the Chocolate Soup store. A little painted piece of metal with flowers and designs and these simple words “Pay attention to the little things. Someday you’ll wake up realize that they were the big things.”
So, that’s love. Filling up his breathing machine with water, following her through a store and testing hand lotions, charging her car heater, sleeping on his right shoulder year after year. It’s not the roses and the chocolates once a year that we’ll remember and cherish. It’s the daily cup of coffee or maybe an old flashlight that we’ll finally hold to our hearts and gratefully shed a tear over.
Love to all,
Martha