A Little Bit of Romance

Source: Pinterest

Something that my husband and I do almost every night when we sit down to dinner together is light some candles on the table. It's nothing fancy--just some simple white votive candles in glass jars. My husband calls these candles "a little bit of romance," just as he calls our incredibly tiny table "our cute little French cafe" (the table above is about the same size as ours, although ours isn't quite this perfect or French). Can you tell that he's playful and a little eccentric?

My parents gave us a beautiful dining room table and gorgeous chairs and a sideboard for our wedding gift, but they are still in Upstate New York, waiting for us to make our way out of the South and put them to good use. So for now we have our itty-bitty bistro table, just (barely) big enough for two, and we try to make the best of it.

We went to see the movie Hope Springs over the weekend, which if you haven't seen it, is about a longtime married couple that has completely fallen out of touch with their marriage and each other. They don't share a bed or even a bedroom, they never touch or talk about what they're feeling and thinking, and they have a routine that seems to be set in stone. They love each other, but they're not too happy or intimate anymore.

And this made me think about our candles and our little table. Of course, my husband and I are still newly married and I don't pretend to know what it's like to be married for 31 years, as the characters in this movie were. But it seemed like it was the small things, the details, that they had let go of--the things that can so easily go by the wayside but are sorely missed when they're gone. Small, simple things like "a little bit of romance" and sharing dinner each night at an intimate little table (you don't have to pretend you're at a French cafe, we've got that covered). 

I appreciate our candlelight dinners more now after seeing this movie. In the years ahead, when our bistro table has been relegated to a backyard patio, or maybe a porch, and when dinnertime on most nights has become too hectic to think about candles, I hope and pray that we will find other small, simple ways to be romantic and playful together.