Read other letters about this article

• Friday, May 19, 2006 08:07 AM

  Small Moments

  This isn't advice - just a little story.

  I knew a romance novel leading man in college. He was the most gorgeous creature any of us had ever seen and was impossibly unaware of his effect on practically the entire female population of our department. For reasons unknown to me we became close friends - I was two years older than him, utterly plain, and have no clue what led him to start talking to me, but it turns out we had a lot in common and enjoyed each other's company. Because I had a boyfriend (my now husband) we stayed just friends and I had the joy of seeing him meet and fall in love with a beautiful sweet girl that I grew to be very fond of. When she began spending time at his apartment, she came up to me one morning grinning from ear to ear and told me that he had bought her a toothbrush. Her own toothbrush for when she stayed at his house. I thought it was the most romantic thing I had ever heard - makes me smile now.

  My point is that it is the tiniest things that make up romance - moments so small that unless you are looking for them you almost always miss them. Years later, my husband's job took him out of town a lot. I began to get very lonely and spent a long time watching romantic movies and feeling sad that my life didn't quite seem to measure up. But then I remembered my college friend and I started paying attention. And I noticed the time he softly brushed the hair out of my face, the time I caught him looking at me when he thought I wouldn't notice, the time he fixed dinner for me or bought me a new robe made of the softest terry cloth I'd ever felt. These things, captured in print or in a movie, are what make up romance novels - and in real life they usually get missed completely. The movies never show what happens in between - the hours of just living that make up most of the time. They focus on the moments.

  So I started paying attention to them too - and you know what? My life is better than the romance novels I used to read.

  —Wilson Read Wilson's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel