She kept a list on her phone titled, simply, “Things.” It had grown over the years into something close to four hundred entries — small observations about him, things he’d said or done that she didn’t want to lose to the ordinary forgetting that happens to a life.
*Hums when he thinks no one’s listening. Always reads the last page of a book first and lies about it. Cried at the dog food commercial, denied it for a week.*
He found the list by accident, looking for a recipe she’d saved in her notes, and scrolled through it for almost twenty minutes without saying anything, his expression shifting from amusement to something quieter.
“How long have you been doing this?” Imran asked finally.
Delphine looked up from across the room, briefly caught out. “Since the second year, I think.”
“There’s four hundred things on here.”
“There are four hundred things I didn’t want to forget.”
He kept scrolling. Some entries made him laugh — the dog food commercial entry, especially, which he’d genuinely thought he’d gotten away with. Others made him go very still, the small ones, the entries that had clearly been written in difficult moments: *held my hand through the whole appointment without once checking his phone. didn’t ask me to explain why I was crying, just got the tissues.*
“You really keep track,” he said, quieter now.
“I don’t want to lose the version of you that does these things. Even the small ones. Especially the small ones.” She came and sat beside him. “People think love is the big anniversary moments. It’s not. It’s four hundred small entries nobody else would think to write down.”
He handed the phone back, but kept his arm around her.
“Add one,” he said.
“What should it say?”
“Whatever this moment is. I don’t have the words for it yet.”
She thought for a moment, then typed: *found the list. didn’t laugh at the wrong parts. understood exactly which ones mattered.*
✦ Today’s Reflection
If you kept a list of the small, specific things your partner does that you never want to forget, what would the first entry be?
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Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc 
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