Let Your Fingers Do the Talking Sometimes

My wife Adrianne and I had the loveliest spontaneous chat late one night — using paper as our communications medium.

We were sitting at the kitchen table, having a late-evening glass of wine together, when Adrianne reached for the sticky notes that happened to be on the counter nearby and said, “Let’s use these to talk.”

And so we did.

There we were: Two card-carrying introverts, each of us exhausted in our own way, letting our fingers do the talking using red pen on bright blue squares of paper.

The words between us flowed effortlessly, even more easily than they usually do — especially since we both got the comparatively rare chance to think for a moment or two before speaking. We reaffirmed our love for one another, reflected upon a few of the challenges we’d been facing, and closed by drawing a heart with the phrase “P + A” inside.

At one point I told Adrianne, perhaps for the first time in such an explicit, purposeful way: “I think deeply and I feel deeply.” I noted that I have always been and always will be this way, even if it’s not in the typical-male handbook.

The fact that I was writing instead of speaking encouraged me to say things I might not have otherwise said, in ways I might not have otherwise said them. It was the same for Adrianne, too.

I hope the two of us talk this way again sometime. (I’ll send her a written invitation to make it happen.) It was fascinating. And illuminating.

And liberating.