My family celebrates Valentine’s Day, but my husband and I don’t, especially. I have nothing against the commercialism of the holiday. I’m not here to remind anyone that it’s initially, historically, a story of martyrdom. I enjoy all the hearts and roses and bad couplets, and the good couplets. I like that it’s a reason for reminding ourselves of all the people we care about, as well as those we loved once, and the lessons we’ve learned through the process. I like that it’s an excuse for reading some of my favorite poets, and that lists appear of the best love songs, and heart break anthems.
When sometimes it seems like the world is a fractured place, I like being reminded that there’s a holiday about love, even when love is complicated and difficult, and that the reason Cupid exists is that basic humanity dictates the universal need not to go through life alone. We need family, friends, partners.
This year, Valentine’s Day is on a Sunday. On Wednesday night, my husband yelled from the family room to where I was working in the kitchen, “If I forget to tell you, happy Valentines Day!” And I know I bought a card a couple weeks ago. At least I’m pretty sure I did. I may have just looked at them. In any case, I looked in the top three places I would have tucked a card away, and I can’t find it.
I don’t know if my husband and I have ever shared a chocolate lava cake from a Valentine’s Day menu, but we’ve definitely, and repeatedly, shared a bottle of wine after a ridiculously long day that has had both of us running in different directions before coming home to a house that has dishes in the sink, Shopkins scattered in the living room and laundry unfolded in baskets lined up in front of the dryer.
A decade ago — a little more than a decade ago, I guess — I went to the gym most nights and then we went out for drinks. We slept in on weekends because we’d never gotten out of the habit of doing so. Now, we’ve added children and mortgages and crazy schedules to our lives. We’re part of a relay team that seemingly never stops running. His shift starts at 5am, and mine ends around midnight. Sometimes I think he could run his leg differently, and sometimes he thinks I could be more efficient if I just took this or that logical and friendly piece of advice, and sometimes we get tired and a little cranky. But at 9pm when we’re curled on the couch watching The Daily Show, mutually, wordlessly agreeing to ignore those laundry baskets for one more day, my weary sigh of contentment is a real-life sonnet.
I have a Target bag of holiday cuteness tucked away for the children, a circle of friends I love like family, and family who loves me for my best intentions and despite my flaws. And so while I am not anticipating a dozen roses, and my husband may not even get a card, I’m feeling the love this Valentine’s Day.