Mundane expressions of love matter more than movie versions

By David McElroy · January 12, 2016

A family almost made me cry tonight — not because they did anything wrong or bad — but because of the love I saw they had for each other.

Most families tend to depress me when I observe them. The dynamics I see — between husband and wife, between parents and children — frequently range from shocking meanness to simple indifference. (I’m never sure which is worse.) Sometimes the man is a sullen bully. Sometimes the woman is a bitter complainer who’s eager to criticize everyone.

There are dozens of variations. The worst are the ones in which you can see confusion and fear in the faces of the younger children — and cynical copies of their parents in the older children.

I see so many families which are some version of this, where the ugly realities of choices they’ve made have left them resentful and hollow at best. They’re people who seem defeated by life — and who are determined to take out their frustrations on the people they live with. Because I see this so often, it makes me happy to see something which appears emotionally healthy and positive.

I’ve been watching two parents and three children in Chick-fil-A this evening. They’re the sort of people who give me hope that I can still have the kind of family I want.

You know those really fake pictures you see in ads for restaurants, the ones in which happy and energetic parents and children are interacting in perfect harmony and bliss? That’s not what I’m seeing. Instead, I’m seeing something more real. I’m seeing a tired couple with young children who seem to love each other and who seem to have a healthy relationship in spite of an exhausting life.

The husband and wife are clearly tired, but they smile at each other and they communicate directly. They seem happy to see each other and they seem happy to be spending time with their children. It’s hard to explain it. They look at each other directly. They talk and compare notes about the day, at the same time they share the job of dealing with children whose ages I estimate as about 2, 4 and 7.

The woman was talking about a difficult day at work. I couldn’t tell exactly what the issue was, but it sounded like a long-running office issue that the man was familiar with. He asked questions and seemed genuinely interested in the details. He listened.

The father had apparently been with the children today and they were meeting mom for dinner. The middle child had been to the doctor for a minor ear problem and the other kids had tagged along with dad. It was obvious that they had already spoken on the phone about whatever happened at the doctor, but the husband added some details and they considered options.

The family seemed to have a lot going on. The adults both seemed tired. The children were energetic in a way that reminded me of barely contained chaos. The parents were splitting their attention between each other and the various children. The oldest girl got too loud demonstrating some kind of dance she had learned or possibly made up. I wasn’t sure about that. The mom urged her to show her again after they got home, because she was too loud.

The man noticed his wife’s drink was empty. He picked up her cup and stood to go get some more for her.

“I can do it,” she sad. “I know you’re tired.”

“Yeah, but you are, too,” he said. “Just sit. I love you.”

And he briefly took her hand and kissed it — and then headed toward the front for her refill.

The mom reached out to wipe the face of the youngest child and I found myself think that I was watching a family love story — not the grand kind from the movies, but the most mundane, simple kind.

That kind of love might be the only kind that matters.

I’m sure they’re not perfect. I’m sure they have their less-than-polite days. But these were a man and a woman who loved each other, who loved their children, and who were living that love in a very real, practical way in front of children who were watching them and learning what a family is supposed to be.

As they got up to leave, I felt a little teary-eyed. I didn’t really want them to leave. I wanted to keep watching, because these people appear to have what I want.

I felt envious of them — and it made my empty heart ache with a dull longing for the mundane love they’ve found with each other.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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