Two years ago I took my new bride and daughter to Texas to meet my family. It was our first Christmas together as a married couple, and it was my first Christmas in Texas since 1998. Below is a love story. It's about being so focused on the one you love, everything else in the world disappears. This is a rerun, first published in January, 2015. Please read, "Like" and "Share".
I watched for a bit, and it took every fiber of my being to not get up and do something to help. It broke my heart to watch, yet, at the same time, filled me with a warmth and joy. And it was a great time for learning. In this story Lesson Number One is patience.
This is Randy, and welcome to Randy’s Ramblings. As we stumble through this thing called life, sometimes we experience things that are so personal and private, they still beg to be shared. Here’s one of those experiences. If the need arises, I hope I am able to act this way. No, I pray I will have this within me.
He stopped cutting up the pancakes to take the syrup away from her. She wanted to pour it on the eggs. As he grasped the syrup, she put her elbow down into the pancakes, covered in butter. He sat down the syrup, picked up a napkin, and cleaned off the coat sleeve. It’s about 10 minutes into the meal, and she finally takes the first bite, a nibble of bacon. A slow smile comes to her face. Instead of syrup, she applies salt and pepper to the eggs, prepared over medium. Then sits and stares at the eggs. Once again picking up the fork and knife, he dices up the eggs, hand her the fork, and watches it fall to the floor. Another fork procured, she finally begins to really eat. Everyone else is either finished, or almost finished. A nibble of this, a small bite of that, she needed a thirty minute head start.
She slowly savors every bite, oblivious to the fact that the restaurant is busy this Saturday morning, and the big table her extended family is taking up is desperately needed for new business. And then, history repeats itself. The coat sleeve is back in the plate of pancakes, now covered in maple syrup. He carefully cleans the sleeve, helps remove the coat, and hands the fork back to her. She picks up a biscuit. And sits and stares. You just know that she’s trying to decide how to split it open. Pull it? Use a knife? Does it unscrew? Too much to consider, the biscuit goes back to the plate, undisturbed.
She’s an organized eater. First, the pancakes. Sometimes stirring them up in the syrup, other times using the”stabbing” method. Then on to the two sausage patties. They don’t produce the smile that the first bite of bacon extracted. Then a strip of bacon. Then the eggs. Forty five minutes. She’s about half way through. Most of their party has gotten up and moved over to do some shopping. She doesn’t realize. He brushes away the crumbs as they fall, dabs up the butter that drips. And in this cafe of 100 people, in their world, there are only two. The server comes to take her plate. One strip of bacon resides on the platter. And he brushes him away. “She’s not finished”. The server retreats. The meal is almost complete. Then everything that has “gone wrong” throughout the meal is forgotten as she picks up another biscuit, breaks it apart, and picks up a spoon and expertly applies apple butter to the two halves, and brags about how good the apple butter is on the home made style biscuit. It’s as though someone else has taken her place for a few minutes.
And then a look of panic crossed her face. “I’ve left my coat at home and it’s too cold to go out without it”, forgetting for the moment that the coat hangs safely on the back of her chair. The rest of the party has moved on. He stands up, dons his cap, and gently takes her by the elbow. It takes a few tries to stand. On the second try, this time it’s a hand that winds up in the still unremoved pancake platter, empty but still covered with sticky syrup residue. He picks up a clean napkin, dips it in a water glass gently and methodically cleans her hand. I finally speak. “How long have you two been together?” He smiles and says, “Goin’ on 60 years”. And there is it. Lesson Number Two. Nothing else matters.
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