I Am Thankful For Romance

 Perhaps it it our imperfections 

that make us so perfect for one another!*

My father is a physicist and a mathematician. He's approximately as romantic as a physicist or a mathematician. My mother, though she is a Jane Austen aficionado, is much more Lizzie than Catherine. Displays of worldly romance between my parents were not frequent visitors to my life. There was the time that my dad randomly purchased Sting tickets... and the time... ok that's all I can think of. But I want to tell you what romance really looks like to me, thanks to them.

Romance is kneeling together frequently in prayer. Romance is attending the Temple together. Romance is four kids and two grandbabies, so far. Romance is support of each other's endeavors. It's my dad never failing to attend a choir practice he had the choice to attend and my mom attending thirty years of miserably mandatory fun. It's holding hands in the car, and at church, and at the mall. It's mom reminding kids that dad would have been there if he could, when dad couldn't come from work to an elementary school play. And it's dad using his culinary expertise to make us peas (frozen) and white sauce (pretty sure it was made of... milk) every Wednesday when mom was gone to Miamaid activities. It's phone calls very late from business-trip hotels, with nothing particular to say, which leads me to believe it's just because he's still lonely when they are apart. Speaking of phone calls, romance is finding out that German pay phones will let you call your girlfriend in America just long enough to say "Hi, I love you, bye!" if you give them a nickel, and it's devoted patience when the whole world tells you that nobody successfully waits two years for a missionary. Romance is sitting on buckets and beanbag chairs because you aren't willing to go into debt to buy kitchen furniture, and it's eating a lot of red beans and rice and soup with dumplings, and sewing your kids' Christmas outfits yourself, and driving your highly unluxurious vehicles into the ground, because those are the sacrifices you make to work towards financial comfort for your family. It's doing all those things together in solidarity and looking forward to the future with faith and happiness, because what you have is love and charity and sacrifice and patience and longsuffering and health and family, and none of those things can be replaced by things.

Romance is 30-some years of working very, very hard to create a Celestial marriage.

Happy Anniversary, mom and dad, and thank you for your example.

*Jane Austen: Emma