Those who love each other tell each other a thousand times without talking.
-- Chinese Proverb

Love is shown in your sleeping rituals, his leg wrapped around your leg. It can be felt in the gentle urgency of your 4:00 a.m. touch, tender, yet eager. Love is seen in the sated gazes after your best moment.

Love is tasted in your coffee as she fixes it with just the right amount of cream and never skimps on your required 2 tablespoons of sugar. Love is in the ease with which your car runs because he checks its oil and fluid levels each Tuesday morning before you leave for work. Love is on your cell phone because he sent a text asking whether he should pick up the dinner before he comes home from work. Love is waiting at home because you prepared his favorite meal.

Love feels like the pat on the back you give your son as he works on his quadratic formulas and polynomials. Love is heard amid the evening's varied conversations about school, upcoming Cinderella slumber parties, work, and life's treatment of everybody in general. Love is like the bubbly strawberry waters of bath time, the care exhibited in choosing and laying out tomorrow's clothes, the signing of permission forms to go on the class field trip next week, and the preparing of tomorrow's healthy lunches fit for the Prince, Princess, King and Queen.

Love looks like the time you take tucking your daughter in bed and her every last excuse to be close to you before she gives in to sleep - "Mommy, can we read the story one more time?" "Daddy, will you rock me to sleep?" Love is the one more time you give in to her pleas.

Love is the way your dog sits beside your feet, covering them with her head. Love is her moving when you move and following you through the house until you're still again so she can sit back down beside you and cover your feet again.

Love is felt in the silence as you and he listen to the late night news together, shaking your heads in unison at the outrageous news the broadcaster reports, then later laughing in concert at David Letterman's jokes.

Love is turning the lights off, kissing good night, and starting it all over again.

Sadiqqa © 2007