Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

He sent her a photo of the grocery list every time he went, just to check if she needed anything added.

He’d been doing this for four years. It had started as practicality and become, somehow, a ritual she looked forward to with a fondness entirely disproportionate to the act.

Sometimes she added things. Sometimes she just replied with a thumbs up. Once, during a particularly bad week at work, she’d replied with a voice memo — three minutes of her venting about a colleague, ending with “and also we need lemons” — and he’d texted back: *getting the lemons, sorry about Derek*.

He’d never met Derek. He’d heard about Derek many times.

Today’s photo arrived while she was in a meeting she’d been dreading. She looked at it under the table — his handwriting, the shorthand they’d developed over years of shared life, a list that was entirely mundane and somehow, stupidly, made her feel less alone in the middle of a conference room full of people she barely liked.

She typed back: *garlic* and then, after a pause, *also I love you*.

A minute passed. Then: *already had garlic on there. love you too.*

She put the phone back in her pocket and looked up at the meeting with entirely new patience for it.

The small connective tissues of a shared life, she thought, are what hold everything together when the larger stuff is hard. Not the anniversary dinners. The grocery list photo. The *already had garlic on there*.

She got through the meeting. He had dinner ready when she got home.

Derek was not mentioned again.

✦  Today’s Reflection

What is one small, recurring habit in your relationship that looks like nothing to outsiders but holds enormous meaning between the two of you?

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