On their twentieth anniversary, her sister asked her — genuinely, over dinner, the way people ask when they mean it — what the secret was.
Maya had been turning this question over for days, knowing it would come, looking for the honest answer rather than the comfortable one.
“There isn’t a secret,” she said finally. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not useful.”
“Something then. Something that matters.”
She thought about the years. All of them. The early ones when everything had been new and easy, the middle ones when some things had been hard and they’d found out whether they were built to last, the recent ones that had settled into something she hadn’t known she was working toward until she was living in the middle of it.
“He treats me like I’m worth paying attention to,” she said. “Still. After twenty years. He watches me like I’m interesting. Not like he’s watching to catch me out, or watching to manage me, or watching because he owns me. Just — like I’m someone worth looking at.”
Her sister was quiet.
“And I try to do the same for him,” Maya said. “Not perfectly. But I try.”
Across the table, Kwame had looked up at that, not having heard the question, only the end of the answer.
“What?” he said.
“I was explaining you,” she said.
He tilted his head. “And?”
“And I got it right,” she said.
He smiled — not the charming one, not the public one, the private one, the one that was only ever entirely for her — and looked back at his menu.
Across twenty years, she thought, it comes down to this: two people who still find each other worth the looking.
✦ Today’s Reflection
After all the time you’ve spent together, do you still look at your partner like they’re worth paying attention to? And do they look at you that way? When did you last tell each other?
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