A Certain Smile, Cont.

I was going to write a little more for Wes's birthday, but I couldn't find words after looking through all those pictures.

There aren't really words.  Not adequate words, at least.  But there are a few things I'd like on the record.

I learned that old Johnny Mathis song, "A Certain Smile," long before I met Wes. I sang it for a choir audition in high school. I liked it because I was always a sucker for a good smile.

Wes had good smile.  The song seemed to fit him perfectly, especially after he left on his mission.  "You love a while, and when love goes..."

I used to play and sing it to myself wistfully - indulgently, really, as I had no idea whether or not our brief friendship would ever amount to anything more than brief friendship. 

Lucky for me, it did.  Once, after we'd been married a little while, I told Wes about that sappy little song I had sung to myself so often while he was away.  Thereafter, he would occasionally request that I sing it for him. He could never remember the song's name. Would always just say, "Sing that one song." And the certain, sly smile he always wore with the request made me helpless to refuse.

I don't (can't) sing it now that it's so painfully relevant. But the music is often open on our piano and it periodically floats though my head with images of Wes's handsome face and perfect smile.

There was a time very early in our friendship when I hinted to Wes in an e-mail that I was in love with his smile. He was scheduled to have his wisdom teeth removed and so I wrote something like,

"good luck tomorrow! I hope the doctors don't do anything to disturb that terribly winsome smile of yours!"

I can't tell you how many times I typed and deleted that very c a s u a l sounding second sentence. And I can't tell you how hard it was to hold my breath for over twenty four hours until I got Wes's response.  He wrote back a nice, chatty, very c a s u a l e-mail that concluded,

"and about my face, you don't have to worry, I know you can see the most beautiful smile anytime just by looking in the mirror."

No comment about how my freshman heart reacted to those words.  And no way to count the million different ways Wes told me that same thing over the course of our marriage.

And so, on particularly difficult days, when I look in the mirror with swollen eyes and a red nose, I seem to hear Wes tell me, lovingly, (with a poke in my ribs if he could), "S m i l e!" 
And so I try to. 
For him as much as for anyone.

And there are lots of reasons to smile. 

*bonus points if you guess what "l n" stands for* 

I smiled when Lucy found this conversation heart on a Valentine cookie and passed it to me excitedly.  "Just like you used to say to Dad!"  she said. 

I smiled when I found my buddy asleep on the floor one night instead of his bed (better access to his toys/books!).

I smiled about the balloons and the laminated-to-withstand-the-weather Calvin and Hobbes comic our friends left on Wes's headstone for his birthday.

I smiled (laughed my head off) when I read the note Lucy posted on her door a few weeks ago (readable to both Spencer and me)

I smile every time Spencer sets the table.

And oh, I could go on and on and on. 

Surprises in the mail...
Sleepovers at Grandma's house... 
Spring getting closer and closer (never mind the inches of snow that accumulated last night!)...
Neighbors who lend you powdered sugar in time to save your visiting-teaching-on-the-last-day-of-the-month cinnamon rolls.  =)

Life is good!