Love - a casual picture!

One day, a son asked his father: “Dad, why do you and Mom almost never tell each other that you love one another? My wife and I hug, kiss, and hold hands every day. But you two seem as though you simply live side by side…” The father smiled and replied: “You know, son, when you’ve only been together for a few years, you want to shout your love to the whole world. But when you’ve shared an entire lifetime together, you learn to speak of love in a very different way.” “What do you mean?” the son asked, surprised. “Like this… When your mother is tired, I quietly go into the kitchen and do the dishes. When she is ill, I wake up in the middle of the night to ask if she needs anything. When she cooks a dinner that doesn’t turn out quite right, I still thank her, because I know how much she has already done that day. “And your mother? She knows I like a hot cup of tea in the morning, so she puts the kettle on before I even wake up. She can tell when something is weighing on me, even when I say nothing. She may be upset with me all evening, but she will never go to bed without asking if I’m all right.” The son fell silent, thinking. Then the father added softly: “We, too, once couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And we still love to hold one another. It’s just that now our love lives in more than kisses. It lives in knowing every weakness the other person has — and still choosing, every morning, to be together. “Because true love is not about being unable to live without someone. It is about still wanting to be beside them after hundreds of arguments, thousands of worries, and many years of life together. “Young love often says, ‘I love you.’ “Mature love quietly asks, ‘Are you cold?’ ‘Have you eaten?’ ‘Let me help you.’ ‘You rest — I’ll take care of it.’ “And sometimes, there is far more tenderness in these simple words than in the most expensive gifts or the most beautiful declarations of love. “Because one of life’s greatest blessings is to have someone for whom you remain the dearest person in the world, even when youth has long passed and life no longer looks anything like a romantic fairy tale.”