Yes, Love Can Be Unconditional. Uninhibited. Unending.
When simple acts of kindness come easily and without much thought
I was casually refilling my water glass when I witnessed a quiet yet powerful act of love. Pure love.
It was at the home of my granddaughter and her new fiancé. She had painted a gift for her sister’s college graduation. But she used a white dinner plate to mix her acrylic paints.
She’d forgotten to clean the dish. The paint adhered to the china as if it was super-glue.
Typically, my granddaughter’s not forgetful and certainly not thoughtless. But she too was graduating college and distracted while hosting several family members from out of town.
So after the graduations and parties, I found her fiance bent over the kitchen sink, quietly scrubbing away at the irregular blobs of dried paint.
Hues of blue, yellow and red seemed permanently melded to the white china.
He didn’t say a word as I borrowed the faucet to get water. He didn’t say a word to my granddaughter about his find or his efforts to clean her impromptu paint palette.
The next morning, I was awake early. As I made coffee, I found the plate soaking in the sink still flecked with colorful remnants. I used my fingernails and the scrubber to dislodge the remaining color bits.
A quarter-hour later, the plate had regained its glassy white sheen.
I said nothing until alone with my granddaughter.
“I know how much your fiance loves you. I saw him scrubbing the plate you used to mix paints. He was not upset, just working away.”
Crestfallen that she’d forgotten to clean the plate, she smiled when I pointed out that his cleaning without a word to anyone was a pure act of love in my eyes.
Her fiance showed no anger, no recrimination, no complaint. He just quietly fixed the problem.
She then shared a story from when they started dating.
On one of her first visits to his home, she polished her fingernails at the dining room table. The nail polish remover spilled. She tried cleaning it up.
“It left a huge white blotch on the table,” she said rubbing her hand over a now invisible blemish in the dark wood stain.
After the spill, she cried. She was embarrassed. She apologized and offered to fix it. He said,
“Don’t worry about it.”
Horrified, she fled to her apartment miles away certain he’d never invite her back.
But he did.
And when she saw the dining table again, she saw no stark white patch. Her (then) boyfriend had re-stained the spot, now unnoticeable, unless you know where to look.
At that moment, my granddaughter knew how much he cared for her.
Her boyfriend overlooked her clumsiness and questionable decision to polish her nails at the dining table. He didn’t mention the accident. He didn’t become irritated. He didn’t find fault.
He just fixed the problem.
Like removing the dried paint — repairing the tabletop was his simple yet generous act of love. He showed my granddaughter the best of love in his everyday actions. That’s the purest form, in my experience, actions not words.
Lucky to have a 42-year love life with her Pip (grandfather), I experience such joy knowing she has a loving companion soon to become her husband.
Her Pip died four years ago before she had a fiance. But he and I talked about what we wished for our grandchildren. Most of all, we hoped they would find the kind of love that we shared. Unconditional. Uninhibited. Unending.
