Our Second Valentine’s

It’s only our second Valentine’s together, and I’m afraid I have to say that I bombed it.

Since I’ve changed jobs and and now full-time doing tuition and enrichment classes, it meant that my Valentine’s evening was going to be spent with students and not my husband. E’s not the kind to mind, and we agreed that we would have our own special celebration the whole day on Wednesday when it’s my day off. I prefer that anyway, because I think that Valentine’s has become too commercialized. It’s too good an opportunity for retailers to pass up, because everyone wants to make it ‘special’ for someone, and not everyone has the time to make something. In the last few years, I think I became a little bit jaded and cynical about it because of all the lead-up you get in commercials, and shop assistants hawking the occasion as part of a sales tactic. And even now, with someone really special to be grateful for and to share the occasion with, there is a part of me that wants to eschew the entire thing because it shouldn’t be just about the one day in the year — if love and appreciation, affirmation and giving are not already part of the every day experience of the relationship, that one day isn’t going to make up for it.

When I got home from work, I found out that E had decided to get me a little something to commemorate the day anyway, and I felt terrible because I hadn’t had the time to put together what I had in mind.

Fortunately, I’m a quick worker. Having an idea in mind of what I wanted to do only helped make things go more quickly. I did manage to make E a Valentine in the end, and I finished the other half of it just this morning.

 

Carry me in your heart, knowing that I carry you too in mine.

What was the most precious to me about our night (what we had left of it) was what we talked about. That we took time to affirm our amazement and gratitude at having been given this chance to experience life together. That things happened so quickly and took us by surprise in 2009 hasn’t been at all a cause for any kind of hesitancy or regret now. More than anything, for us both this relationship has been truly a journey of learning about what love, communication, trust, givingness, connection, unity, support and awe really are, and that all these things and more are possible to have right here and now.  That we do this regularly only made it all the more meaningful because it really feels like what we have is Valentine’s every day.