I called my dad on his birthday. He was just getting home from dinner with my mom, and clearly they’d shared a bottle of wine. Dad is not a drinker. So I said happy birthday, and how was dinner?
Dad said, “You know, I just love your mom. She’s so great. I feel sorry for all those other couples out there that you see at dinner. They have nothing to say to each other. But we always have stuff to talk about. Your mom is awesome. I just love her so much.”
At this point, I interrupted to make sure that mom had driven him home from dinner, as I think she can hold her booze better. So sweet, though; married nearly forty years and still stuff to talk about.
At dinner tonight, at the table next to ours, was a couple who looked to be late sixties or early seventies. And they talked the whole time through dinner, always engaged, always interested in the other person. I couldn’t really hear what they were talking about, but it was clear they were married. And I just thought it was so sweet that they were talking, still, after all this time, as if it had been months since they’d seen each other and had so much to catch up on. (And he let her have the last bit of the chocolate sundae they shared. A true and enduring love.)