Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day is here. The very air we breathe smells like chocolate. Jewellery advertisements play during sporting events with heady, succinct reminders that, without these 2 karat diamond earrings so reasonably priced at $199, your significant other can never love you as you’d like. Women everywhere wait with baited breath, praying to the deity of their choice that their man will get them a gift worthy enough to show their girlfriends at lunch the next day. Men everywhere will not think about this all-important gift until February 14th. Children fill out valentines for schoolmates they barely know, and then are forced to bring pink-frosted cupcakes to school to feed said friends. Single people - actually, I think they may get off the easiest. It’s the one day of the year that you KNOW with absolute certainty is going to be depressing, and therefore plan accordingly with junk food and alcohol.
Does anyone actually like Valentine’s Day? Somebody somewhere must, because it keeps coming back. Without fail, in the middle of the most deadly depressing, grey cold month of the year, it’s there. Mocking us with it’s cheerful, slightly effeminate giddiness. Poor men. There’s really not any way of winning on this day, is there? Perfume? So, you think she smells. Lingerie? How do you know her bra size : did you check? An expensive handbag? Well, isn’t that something you might get your mother? Chocolates? I can tell you right now, she has probably been secretly filling up on all of the temptingly packaged confection for weeks, so she doesn’t want any more.
Poor women, too. The gift thing doesn’t really pose a problem for women, partly because most of us have the intuitive shopping gene and partly because most men aren’t exactly waiting on tenterhooks, fingers crossed, for their Valentine’s gift. The pressure for women is different. If your fella doesn’t come through with a decent haul, you’ll hear about it from the girls.
“Doesn’t he think you deserve more than THAT?” Most women have at least one friend whose significant other really does it up well. Homemade dinner, roses, yada, yada, yada. Suddenly, the new George Foreman grill that you really, really wanted seems a little thoughtless. It doesn’t matter that you asked for the grill, cut out a picture of the grill and taped it to the fridge. It’s not exactly romantic, is it? And what about the odd intrepid pioneer among men who decides not to participate at all? Who says; “Look, this is just a cash grab and my not buying into it doesn’t mean I love you any less.” Brave? Absolutely? Foolhardy? My, oh, my. Now what the heck is she supposed to tell her friends?
So, what are we to do? Because the idea of having a day set aside solely to celebrate romantic love is…bewitching. A grand plan, actually. But are we celebrating love, per se? Or are we celebrating the new limit on our credit cards? To celebrate love, I believe, is to celebrate the language of love. To find the words, the truth, of what you see in this person you have chosen that makes him or her so singular. We have lost bits of that language in this age of acronyms. This hurried, abbreviated language we have altered. Instead of asking someone out for a lovely walk or a quiet dinner, we can say; “Wanna hook up?” Seriously - ‘hook up’? Instead of telling someone she looks beautiful or enticing or stunning, she’s ‘hot’.
Maybe what we need to do this Valentine’s Day, instead of taking out a second mortgage on that tennis bracelet you think you spotted your wife glancing at, is sit down with pen and paper and think. Think of, say, ten things, that are uniquely hers. Or his. Does she always make the bed, even when you’re running late? Does he secretly love ‘Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants’? Does she wear root beer flavoured lip smackers whenever you’re going to kiss her? Does his lopsided smile make your toes curl? Whatever it is, notice. Think about the person you love, who they were, who they are, and who you know they could be. Write it on your computer, write it on a notepad, on a cocktail napkin, whatever. Then go home, order in pizza, light some candles, and share your love in letters.
Happy Valentine’s Day.