The Middle-Aged Couple


I was sitting at a coffeeshop this morning and I noticed a most peculiar thing.

Opposite my table, there was this middle aged couple who were seated quite a distance from each other. Another person could have fit into the space between them. I knew they were a couple because of the matching wedding rings around their fingers. They didn’t talk at all, just eating their noodles quietly.

Occasionally I caught the wife looking at the husband, I couldn’t quite define the look on her face. There wasn’t any sadness, just a look of stony indifference. The husband seemed to only have eyes for his plate of noodles.

From my place, I observed as she asked her husband for the pepper. Without looking at her, the man moved the bottle across the table. She took it without saying anything.

I briefly thought that this marriage is doomed even without a divorce paper.

And seated further front of this married couple was another couple. An old couple. My eyes were drawing back and forth between these two couple and in astonishment, I watched as this couple bantered back and forth with smiles. The woman had her wrinkled hand on the old man’s thigh and I was amused to catch her fingers stroking it gently.

The old man was cheerful because I could hear his laughter from my table. It left me wondering what could the old lady be possibly saying to make him laugh so boisterously. Because with his hair of grey and his thick eyebrows of white, it didn’t look very safe to be throwing his head back like that.

I looked back towards the first couple. The wife was looking at the old couple now. She turned back to look at her husband and just like that, she slowly put out her hand and rested it on her husband’s thigh. For the first time I sat there, I saw the husband glanced up at his wife.

And then… this huge smile spread across the woman’s face. It was such a big smile that her eyes crinkled into two little ovals, but her face was so much more beautiful, so much more radiant. The husband smiled back and reached to hold his wife’s hand, her fingers instantly circling his.

Seeing that warmed my entire heart. It made my entire day and I still have half to go.

Seeing her try humbled me.

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Published:
11.14.06 / 10am
Category:
Reflections