Kara & Michael’s Blog

Valentine’s Day is like my favorite holiday in the entire world.  I know I said xmas was, but it is tied with Valentine’s Day.

It comes in the middle of winter, when the weather is consistently dreary and all you want to do is lay in bed reading and drinking tea.  It comes to spice things up, and bring you candy after you’ve been so good about dieting for the new year.  It comes to remind you that the spirit of christmas, of warmth and peace and, predominantly, love should encompass your whole year.  You don’t get a day off work, you have to make your own time for Valentine’s Day.  But if you do make time for Valentine’s Day, you realize you can make time for the people you love on any other day of the year.  You don’t need a day or a week off – within the madness of life and living, Valentine’s Day reminds us the most important part of living is making time for the people that make our lives meaningful.

When I was in school, this was a particularly unreasonable line of thought to my friends.  The ones who weren’t completely counter-culture and rejected Valentine’s Day as a created Holiday were largely girls, who were miserable about their love-lives.  I always respected Valentine’s Day as a created holiday, and not necessarily one we should limit to romantic love.  If you’re going to create a holiday, what should you celebrate?  Isn’t the best thing, the most unreasonable thing, the only thing that offers mankind any sort of salvation – love – the thing most worthy of being celebrated?

No one tells you that you must buy flowers or candy or jewelry, at least, no one who actually loves you tells you that.  No one tells you you can’t make funny cards to send to family and friends.  We make the meaning for all holidays through our beliefs and our traditions. 

Valentine’s Day was usually a very simple but thoughtful day in my family.  I know lots of parents who go out for Valentine’s Day, but my parents always stayed in with us kids.  We might have had a special dinner or dessert, my dad always bought my mom red roses, my mom would do little thoughtful things within the house for my dad.  We were privy to this sort of romance, as kids.  It stuck with all of us.

I had a boyfriend once who told me I was miserable at romantic gestures, and genuinely regarded my attempts towards it with suspicion.  It took me a while to figure out that I was relatively miserable at the romantic gestures in that relationship because if you’re not open, you can’t start anywhere with romantic gestures.  It’s hard to be open with someone who regards your intentions with suspicion. 

I can’t think, off-hand, of many romantic gestures I’ve gifted unto WoDM, and I’m not sure I would share them in this forum.  It always sounds a bit like bragging, ‘I am better at love than you are,’ but I’m not.  I’m no good at loving anyone, least of all myself, but I try.  I know that a great deal of the reason I fell for WoDM  was his thoughtfulness.  On the days I was most stressed, he would visit with flowers he had arranged or cupcakes he had made. 

That’s the difficult part with everyday, with being married.   You’re both stressed, often over the same things, often at the same time.  It makes it hard to put yourself aside and focus on someone else, or on your relationship.  That’s why things like Valentine’s Day are important, they remind you to relax every once in a while and take the space for each other.

K.