A Cup of Comfort for Couples

by Colleen Sell

  On the drive home, I became lost not only geographically but also in my thoughts about John 34. Maybe I should have found a way to say good night to him alone. Would he call? He would probably call. He certainly would! . . . Wouldn’t he?

  When I realized I was driving in the wrong direction completely, I started to turn the car around. Just then my cell phone rang. “Hello?” I answered absent-mindedly, failing to check caller ID and forgetting the late hour.

  “How am I supposed to leave a charming and adorable message if you answer the phone?”

  I recognized his voice immediately. Laughing, I said, “This is my cell. You didn’t even give me a chance to get home!”

  We talked through the rest of my drive home, and he helped me navigate out of my unfamiliar environs. We continued to talk as we entered our respective homes and got ready for sleep. After climbing into bed, I talked with him for another two hours! We covered sibling rivalry, grammar school, high school, college, best and worst dating experiences, and summed up that we had gotten more attractive as our friends had married themselves off and the dating pool had narrowed.

  “So will you go out with me this Saturday?” John asked.

  “Why would I?” I teased. “I already know everything about you.” Translated, that meant, I can’t wait to spend more time with you!

  For our first date we went rollerblading on Navy Pier, a great idea courtesy of Dr. 38. I wanted to rip off my wrist guard when John reached out to hold my hand, to feel the warmth and texture of his skin. Still, even through the metal and Velcro, I could feel the perfect fit of our hands. My heart beat faster from holding his hand — and from looking into his intense, blue eyes — than from the exercise!

  All that seems long ago and far away as I sit across the table from my husband of nearly six years, both of us tired and overwhelmed. Dinner is on the table, and as we eat we talk about the craziness that is our lives, or try to, while our three young sons — four-year-old Martin, three-year-old Joe, and ten-month-old Tim — pick at their food, poke at one another, and interrupt our conversation. Each of our boys has his own set of intensely blue eyes that seem to look right through us — just as their father’s did during those 180 seconds that changed our lives.

  “Is this what John 34 had in mind?” I ask him.

  “No!” he retorts, and we both laugh.

  Though we don’t say it aloud, we both know it is so much better than either of us could have imagined.

  — Gina Farella Howley

  A version of this story was first published in Southland Family Time Magazine, February 2008.

  Girlfriend

  There are quiet, comfortable waiting rooms in hospitals. They have soft, clean living room furniture, a door that closes, and a telephone you can call long distance on, for free. It is not your standard waiting room. If you find yourself sitting in one of these rooms, someone you love is dying. It is where you grieve in private.

  Last year I found myself sitting in that room while the internal specialist examined my father. She walked into the room and informed me that my father was nearly brain dead. She said she would try to keep his body alive as long as possible, maybe a few hours, so the family could be called in. Then she hugged me.

  If the internal specialist hugs you in that room, you know it’s the real thing.

  My father did not die within a few hours as predicted.

  Miles away and unbeknownst to us, the love of his life, Mary, had also taken a turn for the worst. Somehow, Dad knew. He heard her silent call for help and he responded. My father had one last job to do and he was determined to do it.

  Mary and my father dated for nearly a decade before they got married. After twenty years of marriage, he still referred to her as his girlfriend. Having survived a failed first marriage, Dad said he knew what a wife felt like and Mary was definitely more like a girlfriend. It always made her blush or smile . . . or swat him on the side of his head.

  Having married later in life, they had a few years of work and drudgery but spent most of their married lives retired. They had time to enjoy one another and they took full advantage of it. There was none of this sitting around and knitting business. No! They lived life to the fullest.

  They worked together.

  They mowed the lawn as a team of two. She wasn’t strong enough to start the mower, and he didn’t have enough lung power to push it around the yard, so he pulled the cord to start it and she pushed it.

  They played together.

  Dad tricked Mary, at sixty years of age, into going to her first strip club. Instead of being embarrassed, she thought it was great fun and laughed and clapped along with the rest of the audience. She asked Dad for money so she could tip the dancers.

  Mary bought Dad his first pinky ring. It had a shiny sapphire that she thought matched the color and sparkle of his eyes. She introduced him to an Andy Capp style hat and encouraged him to wear it at a rakish angle.

  “She likes me when I’m handsome,” Dad would boast.

  They lived life together.

  Soon after they married, they began traveling together. Winters in Florida or Texas and summers at the lake. They drove across Canada just so they could enjoy the view. There were a few stops at friends and relatives, but most of the time was spent on the road or in each other’s company.

  On one of their road trips it became apparent that Alzheimer’s had become an uninvited guest in their home.

  They fought, together.

  Mary’s bright wit began to fade. They researched everything there was to know about the disease, saw every specialist possible, regardless of how far away he was. They tried every drug, experimented with alternative therapies, prayed to any god that would listen. But they never accepted their fate. They fought the good fight.

  As Mary’s condition became harder to manage, people suggested that Dad put Mary in a home. He refused. He agreed it would be easier, but reminded us all that he had made a vow to love, honor, and cherish this woman of his heart. No matter the difficulties, he meant to keep his word to her, that he would always be there.

  He sold their home, and they both moved into an assisted living complex. It was the right move for a while. Dad fought to take care of Mary for as long as he could. The stress of fighting against the downward spiral caused him to have a heart attack. He survived, but was admitted into the hospital and had to stay there for two weeks. Mary was assessed by the staff and it was determined that she could not stay on her own. They moved Mary to the lock-down unit in the Alzheimer’s ward.

  When Dad emerged from the hospital, the staff encouraged him to leave Mary where she was and to just come for visits — which he did, every day. Most days he arrived with ice cream. He spent much of his time going to the mall to shop for special treats, regardless of her inability to acknowledge the funny card he would read to her or the fuzzy headed ornament he would show her. He still hoped it would make her smile.

  “Just because I can’t see her smiling on the outside doesn’t mean she isn’t smiling somewhere else,” he would say. “She’s still my girlfriend and she likes presents.”

  Dad was invited to Europe to visit my sister, but he refused. He couldn’t leave his girlfriend that long. “She might get lonely and take up with another fella,” he joked, but stuck to his no-travel policy.

  Dad’s second heart attack came as a surprise for us. Perhaps some part of him knew that Mary was beginning to fail and that is what triggered it. Regardless, forty-eight hours after my father was pronounced practically brain dead, he left the hospital, barely alive himself and in a wheelchair, to go find Mary.

  The doctors were against it. The nurses were against it.

  He didn’t care. He said he was going, with or without their permission. His wife was not expected to live through the night, and he was going to be there, full stop. Seeing his determination, they reluctantly gave him a twenty-four hour pass.

  Dad went straight to Mary. Not all of his body functions had come fully back
on line yet, but he ignored it all and went to her side, took her hand, and in as strong a voice as he could muster, he said, “I’m here, girlfriend.” He repeated it again and again. “I’m here, girlfriend. It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

  My father fought his way back from death’s door so he could say good-bye to the love of his life. He had made a promise to take care of her, ’til death do they part. And he did.

  He loved his wife with all his heart. He used that heart, the heart of a lion, to fight his way back from the dead so he could fulfill his promise to always be there for her. If he had not fought his way back, they would have died within hours of each other. But each of them would have died alone.

  Instead, he saw her through her death, her funeral, and her interment. He hung on until all the important questions could be answered and arrangements made. Then, a few weeks later, my father finished his journey and joined his girlfriend in the ever after.

  — Allison Maher

  Intestinal Fortitude

  I’m too bossy. Sometimes I can’t stand myself. For instance, the other night my husband and I were at a wedding reception. We stood near a long buffet table spread with a variety of dishes. On the opposite side of the room, across the dance floor, was another banquet spread.

  “Let’s go over there and see what it is,” suggested my husband eagerly.

  “It’s the same thing,” I said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I can see it.”

  This was not true. I just didn’t feel like hustling through all those folks meandering about and mingling while waiting on the groom and bride to appear and do the traditional first dance. After the dance, the wait staff would let us guests pounce on the shrimp and crab smorgasbord.

  I’m a know-it-all. When we first reached the country club, my husband saw everyone else going through the front door and ushered me that way.

  I said, “They didn’t read the invite carefully because it clearly said the wedding was outdoors. Look!” I pointed from the parking lot to the grassy lawn behind the club. “I see the white chairs and arbor set up in the back. Let’s just walk around to that rather than climb the front stairs and have to go through the entire building and out the back door and back down the back staircase.”

  My husband acquiesced.

  As we rounded the corner of the clubhouse, we spotted the groom’s parents on the veranda greeting folks who emerged from the club’s back door.

  “We need to say hello to them,” my spouse pointed out.

  So we trudged up the steps to say “Hey” and then down the spiral steps to be escorted to our seats.

  The white seats were placed closely together, so I had to sit sideways in mine; otherwise, part of me might have lapped over onto the stranger seated next to me. Then I noticed that all the other guests had fanlike programs.

  My husband looked around to see where to get them. I had already figured out that they were given to the invitees as they walked through the building en route to the lawn area where we now sat. But I kept mute. Well, it would have helped to have had a program, because the mike was detached from the minister and attached to the machine of the videographer so the service could be recorded. There was only one outlet for the plug, and that was why we attendees were totally oblivious to what was happening at the altar. Occasionally I’d hear something like, “Let’s bow our heads.” But mostly it was a domino effect as the first rows heard the minister and then the second row monkeyed them, and so on. But when folks chuckled, I had no idea what the joke was about. So it was like watching a silent movie. I guess nowadays it is more important to have the words spoken for posterity’s sake than for those listening here and now.

  After the ceremony, we promenaded up the stairs again and waited in line for the reception to start. That was a bit awkward for us because the only folks we knew were the groom and his parents. Of course, I can talk to a gatepost, and I believe I did while we waited in line. My husband nabbed a couple of Arnold Palmer iced teas and a couple of crab cakes.

  Once the groom and bride finally danced their first dance and a few announcements were made, they opened the floodgates and we were allowed to feast. A huge spread of shrimp, crab claws, sushi, and smoked salmon was piled high on the table near the veranda doors. My husband and I piled our saucers high with seafood.

  “Where’s the cocktail sauce?” he asked me.

  Being the know-it-all sans pareil that I am, I scanned around and glimpsed other guests putting little tumblers of a reddish liquid on their plates.

  “Oh, it’s in these little cups. It’s already done for us individually. How cute.”

  So we scoured the room for seats, found none, and quitted to the dark balcony near the bar. Since we didn’t know anyone, I conversed with the bartender, and he’s the one who let me in on why the mike didn’t work and why I couldn’t hear any vows. He had one meager lantern to serve by and was having a time of it, while we munched down on shrimp tails in the dark.

  “This sauce is not very good,” I said. “No flavor. Needs horseradish.”

  We made a big mound of debris from our seafood bonanza. The waitress came to collect our plates. I had put tails in the ashtrays even. She picked up our refuse and asked, “Don’t you want your shooters?”

  “We are drinking wine,” I explained.

  “Your oyster shooters.”

  “I didn’t see oysters.”

  “Well, it’s hard to see them in the bottom of the glasses.” She held up the tiny tumblers.

  “What?”

  “These are oyster shooters.”

  I laughed. “I thought they were watered-down cocktail sauce!”

  “Okay. I’ll take mine,” said my spouse.

  “You can have mine too,” I said.

  “I guess we are the Beverly Hillbillies,” I joked.

  I worried that seafood debris might be in the tumbler my husband tipped up to drain and hoped he wouldn’t choke. The waitress took the empty containers and departed.

  We sat and stared off.

  “I guess we can get more shrimp,” I said.

  The bartender piped up. “There’s a roast beef station, a cheese station, veggies, and pasta on the other side of the banquet room.”

  My husband arched his eyebrow.

  “Thanks. Let’s go.” I sprung up and grabbed my husband’s arm.

  As we strolled over to the banquet spread, I said, “I am such a know-it-all. How do you stand me?”

  “Intestinal fortitude,” he answered.

  We got our plates full of other good stuff, and dodging dancers, retreated to our own little tête-à-tête in the dark corner of the veranda.

  “It is beautiful out here with the moon,” he said.

  I agreed. “After we finish eating, can we try dancing?” I asked, poised for rejection.

  He usually doesn’t like to dance but said yes. So once we’d polished off round two of the feast, we went inside and danced the swing as others did the shag or whatever they did. We had fun.

  We gorged on wedding cake, met a few more folks, and then thanked the bride’s parents for a wonderful evening and strolled out to the car.

  “I’m sorry I’m so bossy,” I said to him. “How do you stand it, seriously?”

  “I ignore a lot of what you say.”

  “And here I thought the reason you never listen to me is because you’re just preoccupied. Instead, you’re actively screening my comments?”

  “What did you say?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Okay.”

  We put down the top on my convertible Sebring and blazed off on a moonlit night, and I found there really was no need for words, no reason to rehash the evening, no instructions to give. Sometimes, it’s good to be quiet and not to be center stage, little miss know-it-all, the tour guide. So I lapped in the night air like a dog hanging its head out the window letting the breeze blow back its ears and enjoying the moment. And I didn’t yap the whole ride home.

&
nbsp; — Erika Hoffman

  Café Amoré

  Each morning Andrew walks to the bed cradling the mug in both hands so it won’t spill. Like the magi offering a gift, he presents my morning coffee with love and reverence.

  “Here you go,” he says, hovering by the bedside until I take my first sip. “How is it?”

  As always, it — and everything else — is fine.

  This morning, something in the way he moved the mug toward me reminded me of our early courtship.

  “It’ll never work between us,” I told him as we walked through the mall, hot coffees in hand. I held my hazelnut latte under his nose and took perverse pleasure as he recoiled from the sweet aroma. “See?”

  “That’s not coffee! That’s dessert.” Andrew shoved his extra-burnt Starbucks’ French roast at me. “This is coffee!”

  “It smells like tar,” I said. “Why don’t you just go outside and lick the pavement?”

  Passersby turned to look at the arguing couple. Surely, ours were irreconcilable differences.

  “I drink mine with milk,” I challenged him.

  “Black,” he fired back.

  Clearly, we weren’t each other’s type: Aries/ Gemini, conservative/liberal, traditionalist/bohe-mian. Coffee was the tangible evidence of our dissension. But Andrew persuaded me that coffee could be unifying. He phoned to make dates for a cappuccino and a movie or to rendezvous at a café for a chat over java. He punctuated our favorite activities with coffee.

  Just as I began to see his point, I left for a year in Australia. He would mail me my favorite blend and send photos of himself drinking his morning “cuppa joe” alone.

  When he came to visit, we explored the cafés of Sydney and Melbourne and learned a whole new vocabulary to underscore our counterpoints. He ordered long blacks. I drank flat whites. Black/white: another contrast. But opposites attract, and we got engaged shortly after my return.

  Instead of fighting over closet space, we began our marriage negotiating coffee storage. As we unpacked the kitchen in our new home, I opened the appliance garage and began to unload my gadgets. Andrew wanted it for coffee.