A question of compliments

What is the best compliment you've ever received?

This one is from Jz.  I thought it would be a really hard one.  It's certainly a great question, far more to it than meets the eye at first glance.  But, the answer occurred to me pretty quickly.

A few people over the years, most recently my husband, have told me that i am a very caring person.  

I know that doesn't seem like any great compliment, it sounds more like a throw away line you use when you can't think of anything else to say.  But that wasn't what it was.  It was/they were genuine assessments, his/their thoughts about me at difficult and important moments.

I don't always see myself as caring.  Or - i believe i care, and that it is incredibly important to be a caring person, but i don't always see that as "me."  I don't necessarily feel like i live up to what i think i ought to be.

In my family, from a pretty young age, i was the one who ended up making the rational, objective, difficult choices, the one who could be strong and hold it together in a crisis.  That's a more cold and seemingly uncaring position.  

I'm still more head than heart.  That's just who i am.  I am a scientist by profession, and by temperament.  When people come to me with problems, I'm more apt to try to start thinking of solutions than to lend a shoulder or an ear.  I have to work at making myself do the latter. Maybe living with all boys has contributed to that, or maybe that's just an unfair stereotype.  Chicken-egg?  Who knows?

I'm shy, and i'm also not overly demonstrative.  I don't do virtual hugs, and irl, i have to know you pretty well.  While my husband and i are very touch oriented, in general i tend to show my care and concern by doing, whatever it is i see can be done.  Sometimes though, there isn't anything that doing can help.  

I've wondered over the years if this makes me a poorer friend, poorer mother, poorer wife than i could be, ought to be.  

So for someone, especially someone who knows me well, to tell me they see me as a very caring person is a very big compliment to me. Maybe the only compliment that matters.