Today is Sallie’s birthday and it’s time for my annual tribute to her. I guess we can call it the annual tribute since this is the second Sallie birthday since Two Talent Living was launched. 🙂

Sallie is a very sensitive person, both physically and spiritually. I’m not surprised that morning sickness and such has been a little hard on her because she has a delicate system. There was an incident in our early married days that illustrates how finely-tuned Sallie’s senses and perceptions are.

I often called Sallie “Princess” since that’s one of the meanings of her name, besides “favored grace”. So this post about Sallie is a “Princess and the Pea” story.

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Once upon a time in a northeast Grand Rapids apartment lived a young, newly-married couple. As they prepared to go to bed one evening, the husband was already in bed and pondered putting his bride to the test to see if she was really as sensitive about a matter as she claimed to be and which he found a little hard to believe: the distinctiveness of different pillows. The wife was starting to comment, “Did you put my pillows on my side?” when he made the bed each morning. The husband found it hard to believe that there was any significant difference among the pillows. Only one of the pillows was a little different from the other three and the wife always used that pillow as it was her favorite. He wanted to find out if she really was as discriminating in her senses as she claimed to be.

So on this evening, as he lay in bed while she was in the bathroom, the husband decided to switch the wife’s favorite pillow with one of his own to really see if her sensitivity was of the level she professed. The unsuspecting wife came in the bedroom, finished her routine and got into bed. She was tired and immediately hunkered down for the night. She laid her head on the two pillows, facing toward her husband. He waited to see if she would respond, believing that she wouldn’t notice. She couldn’t be THAT sensitive.

Within a few seconds, she lifted her head with a quizzical look on her face, aware that something wasn’t right. She immediately pulled up the edge of the pillow case and looked at the pillow inside.

The husband laughed out loud and said, “Unbelievable! You really CAN tell the difference!”

“Don’t you know the story of The Princess and the Pea?” asked the wife as she retrieved her favorite pillow and gave her husband a warning look of “don’t you dare fool around with my sleeping arrangements!”

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That was a funny moment in our early marriage and we joke about it often. One of the things I love about Sallie is her unpredictability and her quick wit. It’s very, very hard to get the best of her and I really don’t get frustrated by it, but in those rare moments when I do get the best of her in jest, it’s priceless. Rare, but priceless.

A good wife remains a mystery to her husband in some ways. Sallie does that well in the area of competitive fun and it keeps things interesting. For some strange reason, I don’t mind being the one who “loses” most of the time. I guess it’s the laughter which results from the incident that I find priceless.

So on this birthday of my Sallie Ann, I wish her Go’s continued blessings as I continue to commit to being her soul mate, best friend, and beloved husband. The fun challenge continues!

I love you, my Princess.

Your David