John & Abigail Adams

 One of my favorite love movies to watch is Love Actually. Just the opening sequence of it makes me cry. All the people greeting each other at Heathrow with the voiceover from Hugh Grant that says:

 When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love

I realize that we only seem to make our communication count when everything is all wrong. Or we are truly saying goodbye. People often say that you are lucky if someone has passed away and you got to say all you wanted to say. 

I can tell you that I have had those opportunities to say all I wanted to but that doesn't bring peace when you continue to live life and there are new things to tell the person you miss so much.

Everyday conversation between a husband and wife is often:

Wife: Did you get milk?

Husband: I didn't know I had to.

Wife: (sighs and rolls eyes)

But think back to the long conversations you used to have when you first started dating. Long nights. With shared intimacies. I bet they don't really happen anymore. Why? Those were great days. Problem is we know each other's stories. You don't want to hear them again and again. So how do we bridge the gap between what our communication was and what it has become?

So, in this episode of Pat and Mary Save Their Marriage we look at one of the greatest communicating couples of all time, John and Abigail Adams. We know this because they left their letters behind. Letters. Wasn't it nice when we wrote letters? Since we can't go backwards, Pat and I learn a lesson about how to make our modern communication count!

How ya fixed for spit and dry socks?

My father was a soldier, and one of his favorite sayings was "How're ya fixed for spit and dry socks?"

I'm still trying to figure out precisely what it meant, but it seemed to be what he always said when we really had no option but to grin and bear it. And it definitely came from combat.

I think it meant something like:
You're out of food. You're out of ammo. You're cold. Someone's shooting at you. But hey, you've got some fresh socks to put on, so really, things could be worse.

Socks become very important to a guy who's mucking through the mud for weeks at a time.

And they were extremely important to Ken Sweet, an Australian soldier in World War II.

Why? Because these were special socks. They started a 65 year marriage.