To say I have no fondness for Valentine’s Day is a gross understatement. I loathe it. The whole thing just doesn’t make any sense to me. Its not that I have a problem with the celebration of love, I just see no advantage to singling out a single day for it. Why should adults focus solely on their partners this one day a year instead of celebrating all of the other people they love? Shouldn’t we remember the elementary school rule requiring us to bring a valentine for everyone?
In our household Valentine’s is now for our friends. We get every other day of the year to celebrate our romantic love.
Besides, Valentine’s Day has never worked out particularly well for me.
The pain began in Third Grade when some smart-ass classmate of mine noticed I had given my biggest valentine to one of the boys instead of one of the girls. His public shaming of me was unrelenting in a time when I had yet to develop the skill-set necessary to keep my “secret” out of view. I was becoming a quick study on its urgent necessities, however! I hardly knew at the time what my “secret” actually was although I realized that Valentine’s Day I had better figure it out quick.
The day never got kinder.
The worst Valentine’s Days aren’t even when you are single! Let us not forget those extremely awkward Valentine’s Days when when you are ‘not quite coupled’. You and that certain someone you have only recently started seeing are forced to submit to the rituals of the day when as a couple you aren’t quite ready for prime time.
Going on a date this night on what should by rights be no more than a regular date creates epic expectations. Been there, done that.
My most colorful Valentine’s evenings were on nights that should have just been regular ‘getting to know you’ dates and not the ‘aren’t we fabulously in love? Buy me a rose!” type affairs.
Such was the case with the Valentine’s date my friends now refer t as “The Valentine’s Date Massacre”. I had been seeing Ryan for only a couple weeks when a Valentin’e fell on a Saturday and if we didn’t go out that night my libido would have to wait another week. He arrived on time with a smile on his face and carrying a bouquet of flowers. He drove me in a fancy car to a fancy restaurant close to my home.
Somewhere between the salad and dinner course he began confiding in me his inability or unwillingness to comply with the restraining order his former lover had put on him. Um…..pass the salt?
He offered this up the way a regular, sane person might be proud of a small work achievement. Ryan gloated over the artful way he called his ex fifty times a day, stole his mail, and seemed quite happy with the dozen or so nails he had put in his ex’s car tires while he was grocery shopping.
Um, ok.
By the time desert arrived (no to self, never pre-order the souffle unless you know your date very well) he had slid into full tears mode while I was making my silent plans to walk home and say a prayer he could not remember where I lived.
The picture at the top of this post is from my favorite Valentine’s Day. This is the guy I ended up keeping. I marvel every day that he decided to keep me too. For this Valentine’s Day I spent several days planning a perfect six-course meal. All the gooey, sappy Hallmark romantic stops would be pulled out.
If it could be heart-shaped I served it. Those appetizers you see on that platter were heart-shaped crostini piped with pink salmon cream. How lame! I decorated the room with a flock of 50 red birds whirling about in a homage to an inside joke we share. (Only a few birds show in the photo but there were many, many more.)
Unfortunately, I was so excited to be cooking for someone I actually loved (and who hadn’t keyed my car) that I lost track of how many pink froty cocktails I had been drinking. I would pass out just minutes after serving desert — waking only to vomit a few hours later before crawling my romantic ass back into bed!
And this, you might recall, was my favorite Valentine’s Day. Good times.
Yup, despite my ultimately embarrassing display of love (thankfully he did not take out a restraining order) we are still very together and now very proud daddies of a cat.
I’m not going to tell you what we are doing this Valentine’s but suffice it to say it is a much lower key affair, without birds, and vomit.
Oh my God – that “massacre” story is hilarious! And the dinner for your husband — I did something similar the first time I cooked dinner for my husband….I guess that’s how you know it’s real love – they kept us anyhow!
And as you said in the haiku – who needs to be told to have ONE day to show our loved ones how we feel? It’s every day!
I adore you even more Kate for admiting you read my Haiku!
This is very sweet, but it does tell me you put a lot of pressure on V-Day. Low key or not. GREG
Yes, that is just my agenda. 😉
Fabulous stories! The romance must be gone at our house–we’re down to practicality. Sophie and I were in the mountains on VDay, so we left a nice bottle of single-malt scotch with a pink bow on it in a cupboard where Stefan would never look (the gift wrapping closet) and called him on VDay to tell him where it was. It came in very handy for his mother’s six-car crash-up a few days later.