Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

She asked him once, late at night, what he would tell his younger self.

It was the kind of question that arrived at midnight after wine and an old film that made you feel tender about time. He was quiet for a while, which was how she knew he was actually thinking and not just performing consideration.

“Wait,” he said finally.

“Just — wait?”

“Wait for the one who makes the ordinary feel remarkable.” He looked at the ceiling. “I spent a lot of time trying to make extraordinary things happen. Looking for something that would feel — I don’t know. Significant.”

Mira was quiet.

“And then one day I was sitting in the kitchen watching you read the back of a cereal box,” he said. “And I thought: this is it. This is the significant thing.”

She remembered that morning. She’d been slightly underdressed and her hair had been doing something architectural and she’d been holding the cereal box up to read the small print because her glasses were in the other room.

“A cereal box,” she said.

“You were fully absorbed,” he said. “You are fully absorbed by everything. It’s —” He paused. “I like the way you exist in the world.”

She thought about all the ordinary mornings. All the kitchen tables and late evenings and Tuesday commutes and Tuesday arguments and Tuesday reconciliations. All the ways they had existed alongside each other for nine years and still — still — she caught him watching her with that particular look.

Love is not a destination, she thought. It’s the accumulation of all the ordinary mornings when you look across the table and choose again.

“I like the way you see things,” she said.

He took her hand.

Outside, the night was doing nothing in particular, which was its own kind of perfection.

✦  Today’s Reflection

If you could tell your younger self one thing about the love you have now — not what to do, but what to trust — what would it be?

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