My dad isn’t a man of big speeches. He’s never been one for long emotional talks. But he had been loving all of us, for years, in the most him way imaginable: carefully, precisely, in a file he never intended anyone to see.
I never told him I found it. I just started noticing how often he uses it. And I started keeping one of my own, because I realized this is a language of love I want to be fluent in too.
The people who love us don’t always say it the way we expect. Sometimes it looks like a spreadsheet. Sometimes it’s the small, unglamorous act of paying attention when no one’s watching.
I have started testing it, I’ll admit. I mentioned, months ago and only once, that I had been having trouble sleeping. Last visit, there was a new box of chamomile tea in his cupboard, placed where I would see it, never mentioned aloud. That is the whole thing with my father. The spreadsheet is not the love. The spreadsheet is just where the love takes notes.
My wife says men of his generation were not given many words for feelings, so the careful ones built systems instead — they show up early, they fix things you did not ask them to fix, they remember your candy bar for forty years. I used to wish my dad said “I love you” more. Now I understand he has been saying it in columns and rows my whole life.
Does someone in your family love like this? Tell me about them in the comments — and share this with the person who always remembers your favorite things.
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