Sometimes the familiar deserves another look.
Tom and I have been married 31 years.
And yes, we get into ruts.
We fall asleep watching TV. We spend too much time on our phones. We move through the day taking care of things, but don’t always take the time to really connect.
I imagine some of you know what that feels like.
And yet, when he makes coffee in the morning, he brings me the first cup. He always opens my car door. He’ll pick up the vacuum or start the dishes. He encourages me to follow my dreams. And I see the way he shows up for our children, too.
These gestures have become so familiar that sometimes I forget to notice what’s inside them:
The care. The commitment. The love.
After 31 years, it’s easy to see the routine and miss what it means.
But when I think about the coffee he brings me, I remember how many ways Tom has shown up for me... and one moment when I almost didn’t let him.
It was after my second round of chemotherapy.
I had already lost my breasts, and now my hair was falling out in the shower. In clumps.
All I could think was: I am literally clogging the drain with my identity.
I stepped out of the shower, looked in the mirror, and struggled to recognize the woman looking back.
Where was the college athlete? The television news anchor? The mother and wife I knew myself to be?
No matter how hard I looked… I couldn’t see her.
I started to cry.
Tom heard me. I could hear him running toward the bathroom, and I reached for the lock.
The person I needed most was on the other side of the door and I was keeping him out.
“Please let me in,”
I was terrified that if he saw me this way, he could never unsee it... that something between us might change.
“C’mon, Mare. Just let me in.”
“I’m okay,” I told him.
I wasn’t.
Finally, I unlocked the door, opened it, and dropped to the floor.
Tom lowered himself beside me and wrapped his arms around me.
I clung to him, both of us crying.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered in my ear. “All I can see is your strength.”
He said it again and again as we rocked together on the bathroom floor.
Eventually, I began to believe him.
“Thank you for saying exactly what I needed to hear.”
He held me tighter. “Thank you for showing me how.”
I had been afraid of how he would see me. I hadn’t considered what I might see through his eyes.
In the mirror, I had focused on everything cancer had taken.
On the floor, Tom was looking at his wife... the woman he loved, right there in his arms.
Nothing about my body changed. But I felt less alone inside it.
He couldn’t give me back what cancer had taken, but he reminded me that I was still me and still deeply loved.
On October 28, I’ll celebrate 16 years since my diagnosis. In our family, we call it my rebirth-day. We celebrate life, and all we’ve been lucky enough to live since.
Raising our children. Working. Getting through hard things. Laughing together. And living the ordinary days that make up so much of a marriage.
The bathroom floor is part of that life, too. I can return to it in my mind and remember how completely Tom met me there.
Remembering doesn’t erase the times we feel disconnected. We still need to put down our phones, talk, and pay attention to each other.
But it helps me approach him with a fuller picture of who we are together.
That feels like a turn of the kaleidoscope: looking again at something familiar and seeing more of what’s there.
I wonder how often I notice what’s missing before I notice the care that’s already there.
I want to keep noticing.
I want to let Tom know that what he does matters to me.
And I want to keep making room for us to find each other in the middle of our everyday lives.
The man who brings me coffee is the man who held me on the bathroom floor.
Remembering that changes how I receive the cup.
