Valentine's Day When You're Old and Been Married Forever
One of a certain nasty female cultural enforcer of QF said something yesterday that lines up with my title. I just nodded and laughed and moved on. One of her nasty little supporters started spamming me snotty comments about my lack of mentioning Valentine's Day, so it must mean the husband and I aren't "romantic" or "loving"
But see here's the thing:
WE'VE BEEN MARRIED FOR AGES NOW!
What that means mostly is we don't go insano for holidays. What did we do yesterday. Well, if you read my previous post you know I spent the day nodding off. Jim spent half the day at church. We usually only go out to dinner and maybe exchange cards if we're living in a place where Valentine's Day cards are available (They aren't here~)
I got roses, per usual, but we could not go out to eat since the pandemic restrictions here prohibit us from using either of our cars. Only Jim's motorcycle. He did go and get take out from a place he likes that I'm sort of 'meehhh' over. They screwed up the order, and sent Jim home with a box filled with smoked bbqed meats and salad for me. He ordered me my favorite Costa Rican dish, Chifrijo, and apparently when he told them only chicken or pork they thought he was asking for a serving of smoked meats. I cannot eat those smoked meats because the smoke part makes my asthma and food allergies go nuts.
So dinner for me was leftovers (not sad about that, it was all stuff I love) and the salad. My old bitchy younger self would have thrown a fit! Would have insisted this mistake was deliberate and forced him to go back to the restaurant and get the right meal. My older wiser self just shrugged and made it work.
Here's the thing I think the Lori stan is missing - It's just one day. True love is the day to day, it's the bringing me a chocolate cupcake when I'm down. It's me going places with him I have zero interest in. It's making sure he has clean clothes for his teaching job. It's him helping me walk across the parking lot when the entire left side of my body is numb. It's in the day to day, nitty gritty, where the rubber meets the road stuff, not in those roses, or the dinner, or anything else that happens on Valentine's Day.
One benefit of the four years I worked at the florist telephone center was seeing some rather insane behavior involving this day. I was so turned off by it that now the holiday does not have the same significance to me.
Add in some bad memories, like the fancy Valentine's Day dinner I made, and just as the kids, Jim and I sat down we got a phone call from one of our crazy friends back at Possum Creek Church that was insisting my husband take her out to pay her husband's bill. Her drunken husband had done a pump and run at a local gas station. He left and ended up spending hours there trying to talk her out of enabling her husband's bad behavior to no avail. He came home around ten pm, our dinner and night pretty much ruined. I remember how furious I was.
There is the fact that in my parent's rather loveless marriage Valentine's Day seemed to signal a fight, just as surely as Michael Buffer ringing the bell and saying "Let's get ready to rummmmmmmmmmmmbbbbbbbbble" They drank and fought and it was awful. I'd cower in my bed with a pillow over my head, after a pleasant day at school filled with celebrations and treats. I knew from a young age this artificial holiday was not determinative of love.
Then there's all my singleton friends that I see moan and cry over the holiday. I hate that, I hate that they take on the hurt of not being part of a couple.
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