Tiny Love Stories: ‘Who Was I to Deprive Him of Joy?’

Modern Love in miniature, featuring reader-submitted stories of no more than 100 words.

“Complicated things break,” I warned my husband five years ago as he gazed at the plumbing store’s touch-free toilet. “There’s an electromagnetic field,” he said, smiling like a 10-year-old about to eat frosted birthday cake. “Just wave your hand to flush.” Who was I to deprive him of joy by insisting on an old-fashioned waste removal system? Of course, the lemon barely flushes, and our replacement is stalled by pandemic supply chain problems. For now, I wave my hand like a frenzied magician seeking the one receptive spot. I hold in my “I told you so.” Marriage is also a complicated thing. — Sharon Forman For three decades, Jo Ann and I spent Friday afternoons walking around Minnesota’s Lake Winona. We walked through pregnancies and miscarriages, through homeopathy school and university tenure, through Weight Watchers and evolving wardrobes, through caring for daughters (and sometimes their fathers). And, for 24 of those years, we walked with Jo Ann’s breast cancer. Despite her illness, we planned trips, birthday parties, Passover seders, bat mitzvahs and a daughter’s wedding. In June 2020, we took our last walk around the lake. This February, Jo Ann took her last breath. My life will never be the same. — Colette Hyman My man chuckled and said, “I was wondering when you’d say it.” The “it” has always been, “God, we are so lucky.” I rarely know when it will come tumbling out: Late winter on Forest Beach in Chatham. Walking by my grandmother’s apartment on Mulberry Street in Chinatown. Minutes after seeing Dylan at the Beacon Theater. A Paris cafe in an arrondissement I can’t recall. And this morning over coffee as we mark 16 years since we traveled to Jiangxi Province, where our daughter first nestled in my arms. Now, she’s a strong young woman. God, we are so lucky. — Carol Young