A friend of mine sent me a LINK to Dear Abby this week. (I’m not sure how long her links remain active so read it while you have the chance). The headline “Everyday Kindness is Secret of Marriage Full of Romance” definitely grabbed me. There are five letters and every single one of them made me smile.
We are so fortunate as writers to deal with fantasy. Did your spouse act like a jerk and forget to load the dishwasher? Well your hero not only does the dishes but cooks a gourmet meal as well. Take that! Very few things are unfixable in romance-author land.
I love those grand gestures in romance novels. The Prince who is willing to give up his title for the woman he loves. The CEO who suddenly decides to stop working 80 hour weeks because he has fallen in love and making a couple billion more dollars no longer seems as important. The girl who is unlucky in love but finally manages to snag Mr. Darcy.
Those all make for great stories but I don’t think real romance is about jewelry and grand gestures. Real romance is the little things.
Am I tired at the end of a long day? Mr. Perfect will bring me a bowl of spaghetti and sit through a chick flick on DVD. It’s such a little thing but it’s so important to me. Maybe when we go to bed that night he’ll forget to put his socks in the hamper (a pet peeve of mine), but I’d be willing to let that go for once because that’s just him and he made a miserable day bearable. That’s reality and I love it.
Do you agree? What does “love” mean to you?
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People measure romance differently. For most it’s flowers, quiet walks on the beach, a romantic candlelit dinner, or perhaps a box of candy. For me, nothing says love more than ice chips. My husband and I had been married nine years when I had to have major surgery. Now, he’s always been the traditional romantic, but I knew the man really and truly loved me more than anything else in the world when I woke up in my room and he was sitting by my side. All I could have was ice chips. Not only did he have the ice chips ready, but he also made “the supreme sacrifice of having an ice cream sundae” in order to get a plastic spoon to feed the ice chips to me. All the hospital had were wooden tongue depressors and he knew I hated to touch rough wood much less put it in my mouth.
Catherine Snodgrass
http://www.catherinesnodgrass.com
aka Cailtyn Willows www.caitlynwillows.com
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