Terms of Endearment

This morning, while making coffee, I noted my wife’s half-filled cup and asked, “Warm that up for ya, hun?” because that’s what waitresses in American diners say when they give you a refill.

This precipitated a brief discussion about how we do not, and never have, used those sorts of monikers for one another. And I’m not even talking about the obnoxious pet-names, like snuggle-bunny, snookums, or smoochie-pie. We don’t even use low-impact endearments, such as “honey,” or “darling,” or anything like that. Instead, we do something radical: we just use our names. And, frankly, we don’t even do that very often, because we are mostly together and generally alone so when she says, “Pass the butter,” she doesn’t have to add my name to clue me in to who she is talking to.

(I occasionally use a pet-name ironically. When she is talking to a friend or relative on the phone, I will shout from across the room, loud enough for the caller to hear: “Cupcake! Do you want a cup of tea?” But that’s just to annoy her.)

After noting that we did not do this, and that, furthermore, we did not wish to, we experimented for about ten minutes using them to see what it would be like. “Could you pass the milk, dear?” “Certainly, darling.” “Thank you, honey.” It sounded and felt so, so wrong, and left a bad taste in our mouths, so we stopped and swore not to try it again.

And this got me thinking: we also never say, “I love you.” And I think that is just grand.

In so many relationships, people get into the habit of saying, ”I love you,” at the drop of a hat (or at the end of every phone conversation) to the point where the phrase becomes meaningless. Worse, it becomes a lie. I do recall having to say it to a few girlfriends while cringing inside, wondering if she could tell I didn’t mean it, and wondering if she felt the same when she said it, and wondering when I was going to catch that lonely train to Dumpsville.

I told my future wife that I loved her after our heady meeting in Ireland, when she had returned home to leave me wandering the Gaelic countryside in a state that resembled a pole-axed heifer. When I decided what the cause of this condition was, I called her. (I’m not sure how I managed a country-to-country call back in the day, but I suspect it involved a lot of help from the hotel staff.) My efforts were rewarded by the sound of a slightly surprised woman, who sounded to me like a librarian with a BBC accent. When she identified herself, I refused to believe her, and asked if maybe she had a daughter of the same name, to which she replied, in a less formal and more exasperated voice, “Mike, it’s me!”

So, I told her I loved her. She didn’t say it in return, but then I hadn’t expected her to. She didn’t sound flattered, or repulsed, simply concerned: “How can you know?” she asked, “I could be a horrible person.” I thought that was a reasonable response at the time, given the situation, but in writing this, and recalling that I kept insisting she was her own mother, maybe she was just hedging her bets.

At any rate, some weeks later, during one of our weekly phone calls from the US to the UK, she said it to me. And that was that.

It was true then, it’s true now, and we don’t need to keep saying it to know it. I say I love her by bringing her a cup of tea every night at bedtime, and again in the morning. And she says she loves me by sitting close on the sofa when we watch the telly. Occasionally, I’ll say, “I like you,” which is actually even more important, but believe me when I tell you, I can count on one hand the number of times we have said, “I love you” in the past twenty years.

As it transpired this AM, it was raining and grim, so I told her I would drive her to her volunteer shift at Age UK. (See, if I didn’t love her, I wouldn’t care if she got wet.) When I dropped her off, I lowered the window so she could give me a kiss goodbye.

When I said, “Have a nice day, sweetie,” she replied, “Fucking hell!”

Which truly was the perfect response.