What's Your Love Language?

I have a faded tank top in my PJ drawer. It's frayed around the neck and no longer fits me, but I wouldn't think of throwing it away.

The backstory on this is anchored to 1993. My husband Jack and I had been married for six years, and I had recently described to him a certain style of tank top I'd been hunting for with no success. One day he approached me in our kitchen with a shopping bag in his hand and a sly smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. In the bag were four identical tops that matched my criteria exactly. I'm pretty sure I cried.

Jack was not one for poetry or syrupy sentiments. Even our daily exchange of "I love you" was invariably initiated by me and responded to with a humble flinch of awareness from him. The fact that I always remembered while he always replied with a sheepish "ditto" was one of many private jokes we shared.

No, the man I adored wasn't big on committing schmaltzy outpourings of prose to paper. That was more my style. But he was ever ready to swoop in and solve everyday problems with his creative, Mensa-qualifying intellect and his tender, considerate heart.

Did I have trouble reading in bed? He hunted down a clamp-on headboard lamp. Was our laundry room short on storage space? He designed an entire shelving system to triple its capacity. Was I too exhausted to cook dinner? He would brave rain, snow, and gloom of night to make a run to Taco Bell. Did I need a new supply of dairy-free "Rice Cream" from the health food store in a neighboring suburb? Unbidden, he used his lunch hour at work to run that errand on my behalf.

And though the written word wasn't his forte and flowery utterances were not his thing, his fertile sense of humor was a perpetual source of joy and laughter, inviting me to sharpen my own wits in response.

"You are the air under my arm pits," he once declared out loud in a rare burst of verbal emoting—his riff on the Bette Midler song "You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings."

And every homemade birthday card—the boon of the forgetful husband—closed with a tiny drawing of a stick figure guy with disproportionately extended outstretched arms, the very image of the standby phrase, "I love you t-h-i-s-s-s-s much!"

Communication takes many forms: the written and oral word; the hand-signaled gesture or knowing nod of the head; the warm or cold facial expression and the welcoming or shunning body posture. But in my experience, actions that reveal sentiments unspoken are the most touching form of all.

So, tossing that stretched out tank top would be tantamount to burning a cherished dog-eared love letter.