Category — Husband

Love is not just in the big investments — buying you a car or paying for your college education. And it’s not just in the “right” answer to questions like, “If both of us were drowning and you could save only one, who would it be?” or in making sweeping declarations of, “I love you so much, I would die for you.”

It’s also in the small, homely gestures. Like the fact that my husband does laundry on his days off and hangs my hand-washed hosiery to dry on the shower door, or how he brings me the paper each morning because he knows I like to read the funnies while I’m doing my makeup. And the fact that I’m dragging my non-morning-person butt out of bed at 4:30 a.m. again to shower and get dressed and be ready to take my daughter to before-school tutoring at 5:45. And that — on my way to an insanely early work day — I’m stopping by the drugstore to pick up some makeup she mentioned needing last night; not that she would remember it by tonight, anyway, but because she asked something reasonable and I can say “Yes.”

And because she’ll feel a warm little spark when she sees the package on the bathroom counter tonight and will know she’s remembered and loved.

What small acts of love have you given and received today? I’d like to know. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy when I see someone’s thoughtfulness for another.

Photo credit: JerryZz

Technorati Tags: thoughtfulness, small acts of love

I’m blessed to have a husband who is thoughtful, kind-hearted, generous and observant in ways that belie the gruff masculine Southern man he is on the outside. The list is so much longer than this, but here are a few of the things I love about him.

1. He puts a fluffy towel on the edge of the tub for me.
2. His eyes change color between blue and gray and green depending on his mood.
3. He’s got the world’s most charming dirty grin.
4. He remembers — anniversaries, milestones in our marriage, even things I’ve said.
5. We go to the bookstore on Valentine’s Day. (Does he know me, or what?!)
6. If he sees that I’m out of something, he replaces it.
7. If he sees that I need something done for me, he does it. He’s washed pantyhose, and you have no idea how much my heart melted when I saw that.
8. He sometimes will sleep with a pillow over his forehead because he likes a cool dark bedroom and I like a slightly less cool, dimly lit bedroom.
9. He adjusts the fan so it blows on his side of the bed but not mine.
10. He would rather that I do my night owl typing on my laptop in bed beside him, even if I’m a rustling, key-tapping nuisance, than for me to sit downstairs away from him.
11. He changed his work schedule so that his three days off are during the week, to make himself available for our kids after school while I’m still at work. (My mom’s with them the other two weekday afternoons.)
12. We have lunch together all three weekdays, too.
13. He stops by my office to see me at my office on his way home from work.
14. He totally gets my jokes.
15. He makes two Valentine’s dates each year — a family one with our two daughters and my Mom, and a dinner date with me.
16. He tolerates our two cats, out of love for me. This includes the 12-pound tomcat who likes to climb up his back, purring and flexing his claws, and perch like a parrot on his shoulder while he’s putting on his shoes before work each morning.
17. He drives my mother to her doctor’s appointments.
18. Ever since I put down my spatula at the last of my mother’s cooking criticisms, he has been the cook in the family. Grocery shopper, too.
19. He makes the most awesome French toast breakfast on Valentine’s Day.
20. Even though he likes spaghetti with meatballs best, he usually buys the sauce with ground meat already in it because that’s what I like better.
21. He remembers what I was wearing the first day we met.
22. He notices small things about me, like the fact I will usually drink three glasses of tea during a meal, that I don’t like it when someone tucks in a tag that’s sticking up in the back of my shirt, or if I’m wearing the perfume he got for me.
23. The folks at Kay Jewelers know him by name.
24. He kisses me goodbye every morning.
25. He doesn’t forget to ask me if I need anything, if he goes to the store.
26. He take the girls to Wal-Mart or Target for an hour or two if I’m sick or busy working from home.
27. He is totally sentimental. He keeps a tattered Christmas ornament his little brother gave him many years ago.
28. He calls his family members on their birthdays.
29. On our anniversary, I wake up with flowers beside me on the bed.
30. When we lived in Oxford, Miss., and I worked at Ole Miss, I often parked behind a man who had a Promise Keepers* bumper sticker on his truck’s bumper. He was a good man too, but I smiled whenever I noticed it … because I would always think, “My husband doesn’t need a bumper sticker. His actions show me every day what a good man he is.”

Are you sighing like I am?

* Nothing against Promise Keepers. I’m just grateful my husband is who he is, all on his own.

Technorati Tags: why I love my husband, romance