Letter: Goofy and the Girl

Our daughter and her husband, recently returned from Disneyland, had a special-request Christmas gift for my wife who had seen it in a gift shop when we all visited last year – a Holland figurine from “It’s a Small World After All.” 

After all – speaking of ‘after all’ – she’s Dutch.

One-hundred percent.

Which means, among many other attributes, she’s frugal.

The cabinet, for example – on which stands center-shelf the little figurine, the blond pigtails braided beneath a wide-winged white cap, attired in tulip-festooned blouse and skirt, her feet encased in traditional Klompen wooden shoes – was purchased for all of a marked-down $5 at her favorite (by far) store: Goodwill.  She restored it, painted it, and installed in it all her Dutch dishes.

Along with a Disneyland present for me: Goofy, oddly out of place, given his surroundings.

His hat askew, his eyes as big as saucers, his arms stretched wide, Goofy would appear, well, goofy except for the girl who has his attention.

“It is very remarkable to meet with such a woman,” said one observing the wife described in Proverbs 31, the passage closing out the year as it does every New Year’s Eve, saving the best for last. 

“To paint such a portrait needed inspiration of some sort. Such a one is hard to find.” 

Hence her price-tag: “far above rubies.”

“Few only are privileged to meet with this excellent wife, and her worth cannot be estimated by any material object, however costly. St. Jerome writes ‘Procul, et de ultimis finibus pretium ejus.’”

Now there’s an understatement for you.  Translated it means, “You may go to the ends of the earth to find her equal in value.”

The living, breathing 46-years married-to-me version of the Dutch figure found on the top shelf in the very center of the aforementioned cabinet, purposefully positioned Goofy to remind me of the place she is to occupy in my heart.

Goofy gets it. 

So do I.