Leonard WoolseyMarriage, Love, And Those Quiet Moments
My friend is a big man by any measure. But more importantly, his physical status is dwarfed by the size of his heart.
His daughter is getting married next week. He and I are on each other’s short list of oldest long-term friends. My not-yet-wife at the time and I attended his wedding; he joined me at the alter a year later as a groomsman when my date came along. We have daughters the same age and are long-time close friends.
My friend visited as our daughters and wives had escaped to St. Louis for a bridal weekend. Between watching baseball games and trying to recount the different sets of golf clubs we owned over the years, our conversation drifted to the upcoming wedding.
“You know,” he said, “marriage is really about enjoying the time you spend together doing nothing. The quiet moments, reading or talking. In the end, that is what people miss the most.”
My friend could bring me to tears with a bear hug if he wanted to, but now he was accomplishing the same outcome armed with words.
I looked over to see his eyes moistening – the same way I told him earlier about my last night with my dad, my dad passing hours later.
Big men do cry – and so should we all.
We talked about how we went from being single guys to recognizing the curious attraction of the simple act of being with someone, doing nothing exceptionally particular, as intoxicatingly exciting.
“I remember that moment,” I said, talking about my wife. “She and I were sitting back in her apartment, the one built in the attic of an old house, kicked back on the sofa, reading books together. The feeling hit me like nothing I expected – and I knew this was what I wanted in life: someone interesting, smart, and comfortable having fun or simply hanging out. Talk about a curveball I never saw coming.”
“Exactly,” said my friend. “That’s what people tell me they miss the most when the other passes.”
My friend would know. He’s as friendly to strangers as a puppy, and I am sure his heart comes in contact with everyone he meets. I am also willing to bet the house he instinctively plays a warm listener to anyone in pain.
We talked about this journey of marriage and those thousands of small but critical moments people tend to underplay. Rarely does the highlight reel of marriage show a couple sitting together, sharing different sections of a newspaper, or laughing while cleaning out the garage.
The deeper into marriage you go, the more you realize the non-sexy moments are, in fact, the sexiest. The quiet moments, outwardly projecting a meaningless moment in time, tend to fuse themselves into your heart with the most profound passion. And from those building blocks comes a bonfire of love.
Pausing to gather ourselves, we hope our daughters discover the secrets hidden inside the quietest moments of love and marriage.
-30-
Leonard Woolsey