Valentines Day
Single Awareness Day. A mandatory day of romance and sweet nothings. Evidence of the direct correlation between love and creativity.
Or so I thought when I was single.
Back then I gave googley eyes to the boy who crafted parmesan chicken and candled ambience in my dining room. Swore I'd never find anyone sweeter than the one who gave me a leather pouch packed with symbolic stamps, quarters, and a 3-page letter filled with sentiments that still shake my core. Found my place on the continuum of love and loss with the one who palmed a red velvety bear as he picked me up from the airport. Thought I'd found my soul mate in the one who booked a fancy pants 7-course meal.
Over the years, my girlfriends regaled tales of arriving home to pre-packed suitcases as a prelude to a weekend whisk to San Francisco. Rose petaled beds. Little blue boxes. Packages that elicit genuine surprise. And I waited patiently for my turn. For my guy who would acknowledge that his action could predicate my mood on February 15th. Only, I didn't marry that guy. I married the guy who was surprised he wasn't able to secure a same-day Valentine's Day dinner reservation. The guy who prefers to pay $80 overnight shipping fees rather than brave a Christmas Eve trip to the mall. The guy who thinks gifts are less important than needs.
After 8 years of trial and error, he's aware that what we do is more significant than what he gives me. I'll take a hot air balloon ride over silk pajamas any day. And I've learned when he says "I have a surprise for you" that I married the guy whose gift philosophy hinges on the notion that others would be happy to receive the gifts you dream on possessing yourself. While my idea of a surprise is sparkly, adventurous, and innovative; his is likely to be practical, useful, and a token of his hope that I live forever.
This year I decided to give him a break. I let him off the event planning hook by deciding I'd rather we went to game night with My Singles. Only, I got a text 4 days in advance informing me that we had reservations for dinner in addition to game night. He also embraced my house hunting obsession and agreed to look at houses before dinner. And it turned out to be the best Valentine's Day ever.
Watching him get excited about our house, our future, is better than a dozen of anything. As we walked through model homes he made comments like "Well, this room won't be big enough for our kids when they get older" or "This is a perfect room for your dad to stay when he visits" or "I think we'll need a bigger back yard for the dog I want to get you." And, more than anything, he told he me is finally comfortable with the idea of adoption. That if he could save a Caylee Anthony from losing their lives to a parent who doesn't want them, that he's ready to make that commitment. The child doesn't even need to be white.
I felt like an asshole. For making him change his shirt that morning. For being a little bummed that he hadn't bought flowers. For thinking bad things when he asked me to drive that morning. For letting outside forces tell me I should have this day. For forgetting why I love him so much. Why he is the person, above all people, whom I chose to, share my life with. That, even though it's not draped in baby wings and arrows, my valentine is with me always.
Modern life doesn’t always allow for the celebrating of holidays and anniversaries on the days that they actually occur. Kort’s been booked on the 2 – 11 p.m. shift for the last few Saturdays, and so this past Valentine’s Day was no exception. Over the year the hubster’s gotten good at planning for big dates. Last Monday, he walked into my office while I was working on a grant application for my thesis project and interrupted so that he could ask if he could make a dinner reservation on Friday night at Nell’s on Greenlake, a very tony Pacific NW/American-cuisine type eatery. We dined there on Kort’s last birthday and I liked the vibe of the place – the view of the lake, the Kir Royale cocktails, etc.
I get home first on Friday and stop on the way home at the record store to pick up some new tunes for K, which he’d put on his Amazon list. Some Fruit Bats and Jeff Hanson. K texts to let me know that he’ll be home early. I get dressed and wait and wait, and about half an hour before our reservation, Kort finally gets home. He’d driven all the way to Ballard to get me a salty caramel frosting chocolate cupcake from Cupcake Royale and gotten caught in traffic. I skipped the cupcakes for gelato at the Greenlake Bottage that night and ate the cupcake for Valentine's day.
I got to experience the best of both worlds this year – some friends here in Seattle decided to do a low-key dinner at their apartment downtown on Saturday. When they found out that I’d be spending it alone, they quickly said, “Come for dinner” and to bring my friend from UW. My UW friend is male, attractive, intelligent, good in a kitchen, and single. Certain neurotic scenarios flashed through my head. On Thursday night’s “30 Rock” – Liz Lemon asks out her neighbor. He suggests Friday, but she can’t do it then, so she insists on Saturday. He agrees but notes that it’s Valentine’s Day which makes for some awkwardness. I thought back to my SAIC days in Chicago too, when GB asked me over to dinner on V-Day. As far as I was concerned, I was in love with and mourning Kort who was in Japan that year. It ended up being a one-on-one dinner and while eating was part of G’s plan, there were other latent intentions that I missed completely. He cooked eggplant parmesan – even called his mother to have her consult on the recipe.
So when UW friend and I are at the Whole Foods picking out a bottle of wine and dessert, he asks, “So is it just you and me and this other couple? Is Kort coming later?” I get squirrelly and adamantly emphasize the “anti-Valentine’s day” non-Romantic element of the gathering. It actually turns out to be one other couple besides the hosts. But everything works out well – UW friend is a master at steaming seafood and cracking open crab legs and gentlemanly in serving others, winning many points with the hosts for his skills which are not in fact cultural, he jokes, but genetic. But I being Asian too, definitely didn’t inherit the cracking shellfish gene.
Jenn writes about home, as in a house and who you come home to. I think of the notion of coming home to as closely related to my sense of community and those with whom I find affinity and familiarity – the friends that won’t let you sit at home on a silly holiday alone, even one that you may not recognize or celebrate yourself culturally or get sad about, but which becomes another opportunity to create new memories and bonds together.
