I grew up watching soap operas, Saved By the Bell, and romantic comedies. I used to read the Sweet Valley Twins and Teen Beat magazine. I was a sucker for anything romantic, so Valentine’s Day was always a big deal to me.
I remember when Valentine’s Day would come when I was a teenager. I would always dream about how romantic it would be when I finally had a boyfriend who would sweep me off my feet. I would envision fancy dinners (pretty much anything is fancy to a young girl,) and romantic walks in parks, and I would dream of huge bouquets of flowers.
To me, Valentine’s Day was what it was all about. It was a day to be swept off your feet and to be taken into a magical world of sweet kisses and meaningful glances over candle light.
Then I met my husband. I was in college during our first February together, and he was coming to visit me. I spent weeks trying to figure out what to get him. I remember trolling through the stores at the Grand Avenue Mall in Milwaukee trying to find something to get for this boy who I had been dating for only a few months. I decided on an oversized teddy bear. Because what 23 year old young man doesn’t want a teddy bear. And that’s about all I remember from that Valentine’s Day.
And there’s not much to remember from ones after that. There was the one that came a few months after graduating from college where colleaques were complaining about boyfriends who (gasp!) took them to restaurants that cost less than $100 per plate. And then there were the Valentine’s Days in graduate school when I would spend the night at the restaurant I waited tables at, and nothing can demolish the Valentine’s spirit than waiting tables in a busy, overcrowded Bakers Square filled with college kids who undertip.
But this is our fifteenth Valentine’s Day together. I am coming dangerously close to the point where I have had just as many Valentines Days coupled as I did single, and I can say that perhaps it wasn’t until this year that I started to understand what it was really about.
See all those years between graduate school and before we had kids, we tried to get in the spirit. We would go out to meals. TJ would get me flowers. I would get him a nice card because after multiple years of teddy bears, I was plumb out of ideas. But it always felt fake. The idea I had in my head of Valentine’s Day always fell short because honestly, who wants to sit at a restaurant and stare into someone’s eyes for hours. It’s kind of boring.
But then TJ and I had an experience a few weeks back. They had a candlelight dinner at our church (stay with me here) for couples who wanted to know more information about the Catholic Marriage Encounter in our diocese. It was on my birthday, and we were looking to do something cheap, so we figured we would go for it. And we had a truly amazing time.
It was there that I finally understood what romance was. It’s not candlelight or fancy dinners. It’s not rose petals or champagne bubble baths. Maybe at the beginning it can be. But once you have shared a bathroom with someone, and shared a home and a life with someone, once you have watched them cut their toe nails and belch the ABC’s, all those other things just seem silly.
No, for us, the romance was in remembering. We sat in the basement of our church for a couple of hours, and we reminisced about our first date and our first kiss, about our engagement and our first apartment. We talked about the days leading up to parenthood and those crazy, early days learning to be a family of more than just two.
We started remembering each other as people, not just as the other half to a partnership that is tasked with way too much to do in too little time. We remembered what we were like when we had time to really be who we were.
And that coupled with the approach of Valentine’s Day this year just made me start to see things in a new light. If rose petals and candle light feel special, then that’s amazing. But for me, I would be thinking about having to clean up the mess and call the fire department when the dog knocked over the candles and lit the whole house on fire.
No, to me, being romantic means being real. It means showing love in your own unique way, not about receiving love. It’s about the silly hand knit, anatomically correct heart I made TJ for Valentine’s Day this year to celebrate his love of all things biology and nerdy. It’s about him putting the girls down for a nap so I can write this out. And it’s about both of us decorating our daughters’ bedroom door last night, so they could wake up to a little Valentine’s Day excitement.
Now, I look back on all of those years when I was single and longing for a love, and I think about how very much I missed out on because I simply did not understand. Valentine’s Day isn’t about corny cliches; it’s about loving those in our life who make life worth living. It’s about giving of ourself, in all our unique, quirky, and authentic ways. It’s about celebrating the best parts of life and love. For some of us, it’s about champagne bubble baths. But for me, I would prefer to chug the champagne while cuddled under blankets on my couch watching the Olympics.
So go out. Show love. It doesn’t matter if it’s towards a spouse or a child or a parent or a friend. Be joy. Be giving. Be celebration. And be love.
Happy Saint Valentine’s Day.
