Now we are not as advanced in coffee preparation as some are. We do not have one of those fancy coffee makers that you can fill the night before and program to make your coffee just prior to your waking up in the morning. (Although that might be a good idea for a Christmas gift to myself). In order for us to get coffee, someone, (and that would be either Keva or myself since Gracie nor the cats neither likes coffee nor are capable of making it) has to go into the kitchen, pour in the water, scoop out the coffee, place it in the coffee maker and hit the button. It takes effort.
Since the morning was early, I knew I hadn't made coffee. So the wonderful fragrance drifting down the hallway had to be of her doing. It had to be by her efforts. To me, on that morning, it was what loved smelled like.
*******
Perrin was spending the night with us. I had placed some cushions on the floor of the bedroom and a nice warm sleeping bag on top of them for his bed. He had dropped off to sleep in my big chair and so I cradled him in my arms and gently laid him down on his make-shift sleeping arrangement. He slept there for a few hours and then I was awaken by his whimper.
I rolled over and saw him hunched down in the floor, with a look on his face that told me he was lost and needed help. I stepped over to him, scooped him up in my arms and snuggled him in beside me in my bed. Sometime during the process of going back to sleep he said,
"Gwump"? "Yes, son what is it", I whispered.
"Gwump, I wuv you".
"I love you too, Buddy", I said.
To him it was a simply statement. To me that was what love sounded like.
*******
My Mama was well known for several things. One of which was her dried butter beans and corn bread. Most anyone who ever stayed or visited with "Granny" knew that sooner or later there was going to be a big pot of dried butter beans on the stove and a pone of corn bread in the oven.
If I was going to be at her house at lunch and she knew it, she would inevitably have "butter beans and corn bread" on the table when I got there.
Oh, perhaps not the most elegant meal one could eat. But to me, it was what love tasted like.
*******
Chris and his family live in the old house now. But when I was a boy it is where we lived. I could take you back the exact room, the exact place where I used to sleep as a boy. I can remember on several occasions becoming sick with the maladies that children get. I'd run fever easily. You must understand that this was the days before everyone ran to the ER or the "Doc-in-the-box" for their medical problems. Usually Mom or Dad was the doctor unless it was a problem beyond their scope of training.
It was on such an occasion, as I lay in the bed running a high fever that Dad went into the bathroom, reached up into the old medicine cabinet and took down the bottle of rubbing alcohol. He would place it in a saucer and kneel down beside my bed. Then gently he would rub my body with the alcohol. This was supposed to help reduce the fever.
The thing I remember most about these times is the feel of my Daddy's hands. They were cracked and rough like dried leather. Beneath the sandpaper like skin was solid steel, muscles and sinew. How could such rough, dry, cracked, rock hard hands be so gentle? To me that was what love felt like.
*******
I've never physically been there. I probably couldn't even point toward it. But I've heard the story a million times. A young man, in his early 30's, beaten to within an inch of his life, stripped of his cloths and hanged on a tree. Not for crimes which he had done but for my crimes, my wrong, my sins. He suffered there, and died there and at that place and at that time He purchased my salvation and by that single act He provided a way for me to go from here to Heaven, sin free. To me that is what love looked like.
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