Family/CommunicationFebruary 15, 20140Thank you, St. Valentine

Yes­ter­day, my won­der­ful hus­band gave me a beau­ti­ful cus­tom-cre­at­ed card, com­plete with a roman­tic poem he’d writ­ten him­self. Inside were tick­ets to an off-Broad­way show (that he’d secret­ly worked with my assis­tant to sched­ule). I sent him poet­ry, and tomor­row I’m mak­ing him a car­rot cake — his favorite. This morn­ing, our grand­daugh­ter — proud­ly and with hugs — gave us a heart-stud­ded card she and her mom had made for us.
From my point of view, Valen­tine’s Day is sim­ply an excuse to express your love a lit­tle more extrav­a­gant­ly than usu­al. I get that some peo­ple don’t like it — that they see it as pure, cyn­i­cal mar­ket­ing and com­mer­cial­iza­tion (US con­sumers, after all, will have bought almost $500 MILLION worth of can­dy this V‑day week).  And I know there are thou­sands of oth­er peo­ple who hate Feb­ru­ary 14th because it high­lights the lack of love in their life: they feel espe­cial­ly lone­ly, unloved, and sad in stark con­trast to the mes­sages of love and romance they see all around them.

But, as with all hol­i­days, it’s your choice — you can make Valen­tine’s Day what­ev­er you want it to be: you can choose not to pay any atten­tion to it at all; you can spend the whole day rag­ing against cru­el fate and/or the cap­i­tal­ist machine; or you can declare it a day of spe­cial care and lov­ingkind­ness to those who mean the most to you (includ­ing yourself).

I vote for the third option. I intend to keep using Valen­tine’s Day as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to do par­tic­u­lar­ly sweet and thought­ful things; to be just a lit­tle more affec­tion­ate than usu­al; to look a lit­tle more kind­ly on my fel­low humans; to be espe­cial­ly gen­tle with and sup­port­ive of myself.

Why not?

Hap­py Valen­tine’s Day.