Little Things

Always and ever, now and forever,
little things mean a lot... There's another
golden oldie to recall in our Golden years.

They do mean a lot, those little gestures,
the recognition in one another of a shared
sensibility, the awareness of being in each
other's thoughts. A deep-seated recognition
of meaningful surrender to the need to surmount
differences, to accept one another as we are,
to venture into the unknown territory of
full emotional commitment, through that
over-riding concern for the well-being of
the other, rising over concerns for self.

When we danced together in crowded rooms
of even more crowded dance floors where
natural selection of a different kind takes
place, surrendering ourselves to the melodic
sound, and murmuring those gentle words
we could hardly have been capable of
visualizing our future together, and just
how very deep our commitment would be
through the small, shared things we valued.

Small things they may be; ritual, routine,
daily shared concerns and trite tasks of
everyday living, but they are magnified by
the very essence of their reliability of
occurrence so that an absence of their very
ordinariness would represent a profound loss.
There is nothing little about the sum total
of those moments of tender sharing.

Our quotidian shared morning showers,
where we soap each others' backs, and you
dole out shampoo into my hands. When you
spread lotion over my back, and carefully
attend with assisting in dressing me.
Together setting the table for meals. The
dishwasher sitting idle, I wash, you wipe
meal-time dishes. We go our separate
ways, you to the never-ending household
chores requiring workshop tools, and I to
tend the housekeeping. Conferring on meal
contents, each assisting in the preparation.

Discussing the news of the day with hugely
divergent, not necessarily equal perceptions.
The discourse challenging and informed,
still leading to oppositional, albeit not entirely
opposed conclusions, we agree each view has
some merit, but remain fundamentally each
within our personal views and conclusions.

Our daily walks in the woods, where we divide
the stewardship of two small dogs, as together
we clamber up hills and descend others,
marvelling at nature's seasons and the passage
thereof. All much too swift, dazzling us with
the speed of transition, sad with the thought that
any one day in the passage of time will never,
in its uniqueness, be met again, anticipating
the arrival of successors yet finite they be.

It is the little things that make up the minutia
of life. For us, the predictability of habit born
of deep and abiding love for one another and the
zest of meeting the days together, bidding them
farewell in tandem as we prepare to take to
our beds for each night's practise of finality.