Love apparent…

When I bent over to kiss my sort-of sleeping husband goodbye, he said, “Did you see that I covered you with a blanket last night?”

I hadn’t noticed, but I was thankful.

The air had fallen to a crisp 58 degrees overnight, and our open sliding glass door beckoned the chill into our bedroom. Apparently, my dear husband noticed me shivering and added a throw — his favorite throw — to my sleeping form.

“I saved you from shivering to death.”

His little act of tenderness also warmed my little heart.

A couple of weeks ago, we went on a beach vacation together, a somewhat spontaneous vacation I originally had arranged to take alone. It would have been my first solo vacation of my entire life, and I admit I was rather excited to go away and do exactly what I wanted to do.

My husband, who planned to stay home to work, seemed to understand my need to get away by myself.

“It will be Mom’s first vacation in 21 years,” Steve told our 19-year-old son, who was a bit incredulous that I would be going alone.

“What do you mean?” Adam asked. “She’s been on lots of vacations.”

“With us,” Steve added, “which is not really a vacation.”

“Well, then,” Adam responded to my husband. “I haven’t been on a vacation my entire life.”

“Your entire life has been a vacation,” my husband countered.

(I admit that when I returned from my first vacation with Steve and the four children we then had, my neighbor asked me how it went. “Same job, different place,” I told him. That pretty much summed up vacations for me — if you also add in the planning, packing and unpacking. Not that I was ungrateful, as I grew up in a family that never took vacations. Being in a different place doing a job you love for people happy to be in a different place is still nice — but to be in a different place doing no job at all? Hmmm…)

As it turned out, I didn’t go on vacation by myself. My husband ended up joining me — but he was so apologetic about infringing on “my” vacation that he went out of his way to make sure it wasn’t the “same job, different place” experience. He drove the distance, which was a blessing in itself as the car was having issues and the road was under construction most of the way. Shortly after we arrived, he began calling himself my “cabana boy” and rubbed my back, brought me drinks, and otherwise catered to my every need. Instead of cooking, we shared meals in restaurants and simply enjoyed being together while someone else did the work.

But more than giving me a short massage and sustenance, my husband gave me love, making his love for me abundantly apparent with those little acts of tenderness. And like covering me with a blanket to keep me from shivers I didn’t know I had, he warmed my heart. Am I blessed or what? I love this man.