What Do You Think Is Romantic?

There are probably as many answers to that question as there are people on the planet.

There’s candlelight dinners for two...

Poems… Jewelry… Music…

I think romance is basically something you do to show someone that you love them and you’re thinking about them.

Now Mr. Redoux has always been romantic. But it’s his own brand of romance. Kind of unconventional. Non-traditional.

And that’s what I love about him.

He sold his muscle car to buy my engagement ring.

For our anniversary one year, he wrote me a list of 26 things he loves about me using every letter of the alphabet for the first letter of each word or sentence.

One of the most romantic things my husband does is bring me flowers.

But the flowers he gives me are not from a florist.

Or a store.

They’re roses he picks from our garden.

He picks them and brings them to me.

On a random day.

Out of nowhere.

No reason. No special occasion. No date on the calendar that says he has to. He just thinks of me and brings me a rose.

Just because…

When we lived in Nor Cal, every spring he made it his mission to bring me the first rose of the season. He would watch and wait for it to bloom. I think it became a challenge for him to get it before the deer did. You see, the deer run rampant there. And I don’t know if you know this about deer but they think that roses are the most delicious things ever. And they think that they exist just so they can eat them. Their munching on our rose bushes outside our bedroom window would actually wake us up at night!

I remember one particular spring — May 1982.

I was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery. My mom was with me. My husband had been there with me for a few days and then he had to get on a plane and go bury his dad. They had lost him in the recovery room from complications after his surgery. Two days before mine.

A couple of days after he left, my mom walked into my hospital room with a home-grown rose.

That single hand-picked rose meant more to me than a thousand florist-delivered bouquets.

You see, even though he was two thousand miles away, my husband had made sure I still got the first rose of the season.

Now that’s romantic…