A Love Note to Ruth

September 2, 2025 

If you’ve been following Happy Hour with Ruth and Roxy, you know that my pal Ruth Atherley writes Love Notes to celebrate those she cares about. She’s good at it. The subjects of her Love Notes invariably feel heart-warmed and humbled at the way she shines light on the best inside us fragile, flawed animals. 

Ruth herself, however, resists the spotlight like slugs resist salt. Birthdays, anniversaries, awards, good news? Pshaw, go away. Maybe, if you’re very lucky, she’ll drop it casually into an unrelated conversation much, much later. Maybe—and more likely—you’ll find out by accident, or not at all. But there’s nothing accidental about it, pals. It’s by design. Ruth has spent her career telling other people’s stories. Turning the camera on herself is anathema. So today, we swivel the lens, snap on a gentle filter and… focus.

Welcome to your nightmare, sweetcheeks!

Let’s start with that. “Hey, sweetcheeks,” is how her text messages to me usually begin. (And not just me—she uses this on many people she loves. It’s so much nicer than, “Hey, you,” and almost never triggers the reaction of a message like, say, “CALL ME!” or “This is your final warning.” Or the ominously simple, “Hello.”)

Ruth has lots of pet phrases and names, and they have the effect of making us feel like grade school kids who just got invited to sit at the cool table. It never gets old.

Ruth asks great questions.

Perhaps the biggest life lesson I’ve learned from Ruth is that to have a great conversation—to learn more about another person—requires asking good questions. Open-ended questions are the best, starting easy with things like, “How’s your day going?” or “You got anything interesting to share?” and working up to: “What made that the right choice for you?” or “How did that make you feel?” or “Which winery should we visit next?”

And then she listens and responds with follow-up questions. When you have a conversation with Ruth, you experience a rare and beautiful thing: you are truly heard.

Ruth gives great gifts

This seems completely unfair, given that she resists opportunities to receive them. But her skill at asking great questions provides her with a lot of ammunition to suss out exactly the right thing that will make someone else feel celebrated. Then she wields it like an evil fairy godmother with insomnia and a high-limit credit card. (I have a stuffed monkey reigning over the bookshelves in my office, a birthday gift from Ruth, after once sharing that I’d always wanted one as a child. His name is Milly, short for milagro, Spanish for miracle. I love him.) Be careful what you tell her!

My own brain, unfortunately, folds into a panic-stutter at the thought of gift-giving. I really, really want to get it right, but rarely do I succeed the way Ruth does. However, I did give her a gift recently—for no particular reason, on no special day—that she confessed would have made her teary… if her heart weren’t made of stone. (For more on that, watch Happy Hour with Ruth and Roxy and make sure to look for episode 52, Friday, September 5.) So, maybe I’ve learned a little about this, too.

Ruth loves food!

She loves making it, she loves sharing it, and she loves discovering new places that serve it. Holidaying with her is a gustatory delight and has sharpened me (a less experienced traveler) into building trips around food, as well as flora, fauna… and wine. Her own cooking is remarkable, as many readers already know. Right now, I’m hoarding a piece of carrot cake (that she made for guests, not to celebrate any particular day. She’s sneaky like that.) in my fridge that I will savour little by little, alone, hunched and growling. It’s fantastic.

For several years, until we both recently decided (reminder: she and Paul started it) to move away from our beloved Creekside community, we shared Simple Tuesdays, when we alternated cooking a double portion so the other home had a night off. No entertaining, just a free meal, cooked by someone else, to lighten the load.

Ah, the so-called Simple Tuesdays. One week, a gorgeous, sauced and garnished taste sensation from Ruth’s kitchen… the next week, minestrone and sourdough from mine, plunked on the table unceremoniously with the words, “Simple! It’s SIMPLE Tuesday!”

Ideas, ideas, ideas!

From Simple Tuesday to our annual Moon Dance to our podcast Happy Hour with Ruth and Roxy, Ruth is an ideas machine and I happily go along—most of the time. “Let’s go on a cruise to Greece!” was one great idea. “Let’s fire up my new pizza oven!” was another. “Let’s watch movies in your backyard under the stars!” never took off, mostly because Ruth rarely watches movies and is usually asleep before the sun goes down, so I knew how that one would go. “Let’s give out potatoes for Halloween!” also had mixed reviews.

But ideas spark more ideas and creativity is the surest way to keep having fun. (I am grateful that she doesn’t really use her generous fairy godmother powers for evil, as we’d likely be the subjects of a true crime series by now.)

And speaking of…

The gifts, the food, the kind words all speak to one of her greatest traits: generosity. Ruth opens her home at the drop of the hat. She’s the first to bring a hot meal to an ailing neighbour. She shares information readily and willingly. And she doesn’t hoard kind words or save them for special occasions. “Holy doodle, you’re so good at this!” or “Wow, you have a gift!” or, my favourite, “I love you so much!”

Now, don’t get me wrong, Ruth has zero tolerance for cruelty or avarice and limited tolerance for stupidity. There’s scorched earth between her and those exhibiting such behaviour. Her keyboard might as well be a flame-thrower.

But for those of us who are only mildly and occasionally stupid and—more importantly—always looking to learn more and do better, she has a lot of patience.

Ruth loves dogs

I mean, everyone loves dogs. It’s the first thing people write on their dating bios, right? Lots of people even have dogs. But not everyone love-loves their dog in that will-do-anything-for-and-spend-any-amount-on kind of devotion. (We suspect our Realtors® did a bit of gentle matchmaking when we originally bought our homes, knowing we also love-love our dogs and thus, might like these weird-until-proven-otherwise new neighbours.) Our visits usually include Scruffy and Chalupa coming this way, or us bringing Luna(tic) and Neo next door.

Few friends will tolerate a semi-trained puppy careening through the house, ripping up any available toys, stealing shoes, and leaping into laps, heedless of the proximity of his gawky limbs to your wineglass. But Ruth and Paul welcomed our dogs from the get-go. That’s love.

Ruth is a good editor as well as a good writer.

Good editor or not, I gave her no opportunity to edit this Love Note, lest it reduce the impact of my words on this day of no particular importance. But all writers and editors know the value of ending a piece on a powerful note… or just ending it quickly.

So, in this Love Note to my dearest friend Ruth, on this not-special day of no particular importance, I will wrap it up with:

“Holy doodle, sweetcheeks! I love you so much!”

The End

Your partner in crime and wine,

Roxy