After all these years, I still don’t like being away from you,
whether it’s a three-hour flight halfway across the country,
or when you run up to the store just a few blocks away.
(Grocery shopping with you is one of my favorite things to do.)
I’m a man of words who doesn’t know what to say.
After all these years, you still leave me …speechless.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Today is the one day of the year, so we learn as kids, when we are commercially compelled to acknowledge our affection for someone special. For me, it all started with one of those no-envelope cards kids buy in bulk. I wrote my name on it and left it, when she was hanging up her coat, for the little girl with short, curly blonde hair sitting two rows over and three desks up in Miss Brewer’s second grade class. (“If only, just maybe, she feels the same way about me,” I remember thinking to myself. “ ..Oh. Uh oh. She’s turning, holding my card and now she’s smiling at me. ..Oh, jeez. What do I do now?!”)
Decades later, she still has me asking the same question. “Jeez, what do I do now?” For many more years than I can count on all my fingers and toes, I’ve been married to that girl with the short blonde hair. Not the same one I met in elementary school. Not exactly. It just seems that way, as if we’ve always been together, as if that was the way it was supposed to be from the very beginning. It’s a good feeling and I’m pretty sure that was when, back in Miss Brewer’s second grade class, I fell in love with the girl with the short blonde hair I met in college and married a few years later.
Keep reading…
Posted in Life, Love, Marriage, Valentine's Day
Tagged Life, Love, Marriage, Valentine's Day
A Valentine’s Day Story for Guests of the WordFeeder
Sunday, February 14, 2010
“Hand me another napkin, Honey,” Henry thought to himself, referring to Elaine, his wife of 52 years. He didn’t bother to take his eyes off the article he was reading in the technology section of the paper. The napkin holder had been shoved to her corner of the table, behind the packages of sugar, the ketchup and the salt and pepper shakers, when the waiter/busboy had dropped and slid their plates on the old Formica table at their favorite booth, the one where they had a late breakfast every Sunday morning. They liked that particular booth at the noisy corner deli because of the view it had of people coming and going through the park across the street and the way the sun came through the glass walls even on a cloudy day.
Elaine finished the last few lines of the article she was reading about agri-product futures, and refolded the business section. Henry liked to hold the entire paper in front of him. She used to ride the subway to work and had become very skilled at folding and refolding the paper in quarters which she did to find the rest of the piece on an interior page. Reaching to the napkin holder, she pulled the first one out, which tore because they always do, and then two more. “Here,” she handed them to her husband, accompanied by a voice only he could hear. “Anything interesting?”
“Well, that young couple at the counter keeps staring at us.”
Continue…
Posted in Life, Short Fiction, Short Short Stories, Valentine's Day, Writing
Tagged Life, Short Fiction, Short Short Stories, Valentine's Day, Writing
Short Fiction To Go Saul’s Laws
Washington Post Op/Ed New York Times Op/Ed WSJ Op/Ed Chicago Tribune Op/Ed Dallas Morning News LA Times Op/Ed SF Chronicle Op/Ed
WordFeeder 