Who is your waffles?

Words of endearments are nonsensical and that's why they work

Terms of endearment are often not so special. While I have no statistical backing for this claim, I have witnessed people call almost everyone in their life, “my love” or “baby.” I do not know when the shift happened, but I know when I was much younger, those words were sacred. People will treat them with the same level of devotion as a catholic would the sacrament. To be labelled a word of endearment meant that you had earned a level of affection that separated you from everyone else. It meant you were in a class of your own—A kind of holiness.

I call my dearest, waffles. And I think back to how it was sculpted into the mould that is us. A simple cold had rendered me bedridden. Men will go to war, break a leg, lose a finger, and behave like everything in the world is fine, but act like death is at the door at the hand of a common cold. I am one of those men, but I must confess I’ve neither gone to war, broken a leg, nor lost a finger, but it doesn’t matter. Cold had me by the throat, and I said seeing her face would make me feel better.

Photo by Simon Ray on Unsplash

Okay, everyone, have a seat, and let me tell you a story. There is no once upon a time, because I do not know when it happened. We had stolen so many glances at each other, we took each other’s hearts without the other knowing. Yours fits perfectly with me, like it was always meant to be within my possession. I often wonder how different my life would be without you, and I conclude I’d rather not find out. There is nothing to show for the time life wasted in weaving the thread of our lives together. Can you see as you make my life bloom? Can you see the joy you spark within my heart? You quell the tempest of my soul.

On her way to me, she got waffles and Fresh Yo. I protested her coming too close to me because I’d hate to transfer what I had to her. She would protest this and insist she did not care, so every cough and sneeze found a resting place on her body. She’d feed me the waffles and nurse me until my mother returned from work. So one day while writing a letter, I opened with, “Dear Waffles.” There is no way “my love” or “Baby” would translate the deep-seated level of affection carried by waffles.

My friend calls his fiancée Beans. I, for the life of me, cannot comprehend the romantic utility of a legume. But I’m not meant to. I’m certain when he calls her that, the world freezes, and she is reminded that there is a world only they know exists, a world only they can walk in and out of, and the key is beans. Someone else can call her beans, and it would never have the same effect, because whatever the story is, it’s unique to them. No one can have that access. She might have friends who call her darling, and it elicits affection, but it would never be beans.

My waffles is my darling, sweetheart, lover and best friend. She can be anything to anybody else, but she’d always be my waffles. And she sings with reckless abandon, and sleeps off once her back touches her bed. She tells me she loves me more, and I vehemently disagree because I do not have the vocabulary in English to tell her that I’m afraid she’d never know the depth of my love. After all, men were not weird to feel love as immense as this. I can write a million songs, poems, and declarations, yet they would not scratch the surface. But as long as breath remains in my lungs, I’ll do everything humanly possible to paint a picture her mind can conceive.

I have digressed a lot. My initial point is that names should have meaning, and meaning comes with experience—stories. There is a profound philosophical question to be asked about why words crafted to carry emotional burdens fall flat in this digital age, but I do not want to answer that; I want to talk about Waffles. Maybe talk to her, that’s actually the way to put it, but it’s almost midnight; she’s had a stressful day and is peacefully fast asleep. I remember when we started talking, while stealing glances and not hearts, I shared a song, “ Without Your Love“ by Dwin, the Stoic. I didn’t know it then, but it would become the anthem to our love. We’d have numerous car karaoke sessions where we sing our lungs out. I’m always off-key anyway.

Everybody needs a waffles because the world is filled with loves, darlings and sweethearts. The beauty of an endearment is entrenched in its incomprehensibility with the outside world. She fell sick, by the way. After she brought me waffles, she fell sick.