There are moments in life when senior love blossoms in precious moments.
Today there were many spectators who probably believed they were seeing an older man proposing to an older woman in a grocery store.
It happened like this. We went to a store on the other side of town. The mission was to restock chicken for Jay.
Challenge one was the steady, pouring rain.
Challenge two was hitting every traffic light on stop.
Challenge three was the drivers ahead of us, who were apparently lulled by the sounds of rain and hypnotized by their windshield wipers, causing them to go to sleep and not move their cars when the light turned green. 🙄
Jay kept reassuring me radar indications were that the rain storm would move on … implication being, move on in a different direction away from us. The rain storm did move … with us. 😳
So what was going to be a nice outing turned into a quest to get that chicken. We were grateful to reach our destination in one piece. By then, I was not feeling as adventurous.
I decided to stay in the car and let Jay get soaked. After all, it was his chicken that had called us to this point.
He decided it would be worthwhile to put on his coat. So he had to fish it out of the backseat and struggle into it in the car. His coat is bright yellow. I am sure if anyone had seen him cavorting to put it on, they would have thought Big Bird was attempting to escape.
But he accomplished it and headed off into the store. I waited … and waited some more. This being the weekend, there were plenty of people there. This translated into a long line at the checkout.
As the rain began to slow down, I decided to join him inside. But on the way in, my shoelace came untied and dragged through the water. I did not notice.
He was in line, calling me on the cell phone to tell me why he was delayed. I walked up behind him and answered in person. He responded pleasantly, especially given all we had just been through. (I think he was really most happy to have scored his box of frozen chicken.)
Being observant, he noticed my shoe was untied. He calmly said, “Your shoe is untied.” This was my breaking point. I was inclined to just live with it.
However, Jay could probably see the possibilities of having to take care of a wife with broken bones from falling. And so … senior love rose up inside him.
He left his chicken in the basket, dropped to one knee and tied my shoe. And if he had asked me to marry him again while he was down there, I would have said yes a million times over.
It’s the little things in a marriage that really are big things. And what seem like big things are put in their place as little things.
Jay is still my knight in shining armor, even when he is in a bright yellow, wet coat!💖
