Tonight I went out into the cold after dark to accompany my husband to the retirement home where both my grandmother and his widowed step-uncle dwell.

I watched Shane carry a bag of horehound candy into the building, knowing that the night before he got out our trusty cutting board and kitchen knife and carefully chopped the horehound (along with some anise and some other flavored hard candy) into more manageable pieces and tossed it all in a ziploc bag.

I have been watching him do this for this man for months now, as he visits several times a week--sometimes more often than all of this man's children combined. He also--and I'm embarrassed to admit this--sees my grandmother more often than I do.

While sometimes it's easy to notice the annoying things or lament the things that are lacking in a relationship with someone, I just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge the steady goodness and the attention to the simple but meaningful and important things that I was blessed to recognize ages ago in this man I married.

I hope I can learn to be steady and good, too.