Letter: Sharing the last donut

To be successful, which of the following is most important?

A. Become more tech savvy.

B. Cut costs.

C. Improve communication with customers and prospects.

D. Gain market share.

E. None of the above.

The correct answer in a moment.

If there are two pieces of toast in the toaster, one of them is for her.

When there is but one Old Fashioned Glazed Donut left in the box (which box took us four different stops to find given Old Fashioned Glazed Donuts are a traditional requirement for our road trip we took yesterday celebrating our 45th Anniversary), then she gets half.

And as we prepared to bring home from the hospital today our eighth grandchild only to discover the infant car seat has an expiration date of last year, then I figure we’re on our way to the store.

Not my frugal wife.

“Can you meet us right now?” said the nice young lady on the phone who by way of her online advertisement had a nearly new, snap-in, car seat hiking-jogging stroller combo with lockable front wheel and all-terrain real tube – not plastic – tires, and all for one-fourth the new price.

Ten minutes later, the transaction completed, we’re all set to introduce to her new world the very little addition to our big happy family, which will mean I will share the floor-pacing, walk-the-baby duties.

That’s partly because she’s Dutch so we don’t argue much. She’s also the dishwasher, so I dry. She’s the keeper of our financial accounts, and by all accounts she’s a keeper: 45 years and counting in fact; four children, eight grandchildren, and a number of foster grandchildren that have come and gone – all loved a lot and loved still.

Like paperclips are to sheets of the same music – bent wires binding bundles of what is important – so has my wife been the bond of blessing to our family, the keeper for the manuscript of our memories, the attachment that draws the ever-expanding folder of our family back home for holidays and birthdays and for no special reason at all.

She’s a Proverbs 31:31 gal and on this our 45th Anniversary weekend as we bring our 8th grandchild home, I can with this wealth of life-experience say that the means to being successful (the answer to the question posed at the beginning) is unequivocally: ‘none of the above.’

It’s this:

“There is a special providence, a unique gift of God, that consists not of brick and mortar but rather of that which is far more valuable – priceless in fact:

“A wife of noble character.”