A Cup of Comfort for Couples Read Online Free PDF Page A

question.
    â€œNonnie,” I began.
    â€œYes, honey,” she replied, opening the oven to baste the chicken.
    â€œI’m looking for some advice.”
    â€œAdvice about what, honey?”
    The smells were tantalizing, and I inhaled deeply. “Everyone is telling me that for my marriage to work I need to do Dan’s laundry, and keep the house clean, and bathe the kids, and get dolled up for him. That will be impossible. I’ll have a job outside the home, too, and won’t have the time to do all that. Besides, I expect Dan to do his share of the house-work and childcare, too. So what can I do to help our marriage last like yours and Grandpa’s?”
    Nonnie looked lovingly at Grandpa and said, “Touch him with your toes.” Then she turned back to the oven to baste the chicken.
    Touch him with my toes ? That’s as useless as all the other advice I’ve received , I thought. Or was I missing something ?
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘Touch him with my toes’?” I asked.
    â€œTouch him with your toes. It’s as simple as that.”
    â€œBut, Nonnie, how is that supposed to help me have a long and happy marriage?”
    She closed the oven door and turned to me. “Sweetie, you and Dan will have many arguments about the littlest things. And after some of those silly disagreements, you won’t feel like sharing your bed with him. Be thankful that you have someone who loves you to share a bed with. Be thankful that you can touch him with your toes.”
    I had my doubts. How could touching toes ensure a lasting, happy marriage? Then again, who was I to question the validity of something that obviously worked for them? All I could do was ponder the possibility as I waited for Nonnie’s delicious chicken and for my own marriage to begin.
    A few months before their fifty-fifth wedding anniversary, Grandpa passed away. Since then, Nonnie has not spent one night in the bed they used to share. I’m quite certain that each night she imagines the feel of Grandpa’s skin against the bottoms of her feet and the warmth that always radiated from his legs.
    In the nearly two decades that my husband, Dan, and I have been married, more often than not I’ve used my toes in a not-so-gentle effort to encourage him to roll over and stop snoring. But there have been many times when, because pride and a stubborn Italian streak make it too difficult to apologize out loud, I gently touch his leg with my toes to say, “I’m sorry. Let’s break down the barriers between us. Let’s connect.” And some nights, I place my feet mere inches from his leg just to feel his presence, grateful that I have someone — that I have Dan — to go through life with.
    I am saddened by the certainty that someday I will no longer be able to touch Dan with my toes. But I am eternally grateful to my grandparents for their simple wisdom. For I am thankful to have someone who loves me to share a bed with, someone I can lie next to every night and touch with my toes. And when my children and my grandchildren are about to take their own nuptials, I will give them their “inheritance” as casually and as offhandedly as my grandparents gave mine to me: Touch toes.
    â€” Carolyn Huhn-Sullivan

A Love Worth Waiting For
    O nce upon a time, more than three decades ago, to be precise, an Oregon writer met a Stockholm doctor in a San Francisco restaurant and they ended up touring the city together, talking and walking, walking and talking. The next weekend, he would be in Seattle, so she followed, and again they enjoyed many hours of talking and walking, walking and talking. As the woman drove south to her home in Oregon while he flew home to Sweden, she had the strange feeling of leaving her best friend.
    When the two platonic friends had parted, they’d said they would not write. Yet, their letters crossed in the mail and continued across the continents, sharing