Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 53

Two things I know for sure this Valentine’s Day. When you are up, nothing beats having someone special to celebrate it with you; when you are down, nothing is finer than having someone special to hold your hand and halve your misery.

Several Saturdays ago my wife, who probably never took a sick day in her life, was taken down by a mighty bug. Saturday afternoon she lay on the sofa bundled up, chilling, and virtually immobilized, moaning, “What a wasted day” and “I don’t have time for this.”

I did what any red-blooded, thoroughly-modern husband would do. I grabbed the remote and started flicking. We ended up spending the next six hours watching parts or all of the best romantic movies—some call them “chick flicks”—we could find on cable, including Pretty Woman, Sleepless in Seattle, 27 Dresses, and Hope Floats. It was an afternoon of pure, warm, unadulterated escapism.

Flu symptoms did not disappear, but the victim got a six-hour reprieve and partially redeemed a lost day.

The most memorable line we took from the movies that afternoon came at the happy ending of Hope Floats. It was Birdee’s summation: “Momma says that beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts the most. Just give hope a chance to float up, and it will.”

It is the middle—the children and bills and disagreements, the mountains climbed and valleys traversed together—that counts most. Down in those valleys, counting on hope to float up makes even the nastiest parts of the journey bearable.

There was nothing meritorious about my being there for my life companion the day she was struck down. I was but returning the favor. “Love,” James Thurber said, “is what you’ve been through with somebody.”