It's so easy for a couple to slip into conflict. Pointless arguments about trivial things. Each reproach builds on the last, the tension escalating. And yet sometimes the smallest gesture is enough to break the spell.
Not long ago, I witnessed something that moved me deeply. I was in a car with friends and their eleven-year-old daughter Elena, who has Down syndrome. My friends were bickering about the quickest route home. "Turn right—that way has too many traffic lights." "I'd rather go straight." "We'll be late if you go that way." And so on. A scene most of us know well.
Suddenly Elena asked her father for a cuddle. Then, not satisfied, she added: "Give Mama a cuddle too."
The mood was already softening when Elena pressed on: "Give her a kiss too."
Her father kissed her mother, and little Elena burst into laughter—contagious, full of joy—and cried out: "Mama and Papa love each other!"
In that instant, the car filled with laughter. Every trace of tension vanished as if by magic.
The warmth—or rather, the love—that filled that car was almost tangible, and it lingered for a long time.
Sometimes remembering that moment is enough to make me pause before I act. It reminds me to smile more often, and with real feeling. I have come to believe that one of the ways to strengthen a good marriage is to keep alive the tenderness that comes from such moments, and to carry their memory with us. It allows us to live more peacefully with ourselves—and therefore with others.
V. S., 2006