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I've had just three memorable Valentine's Days in my 27 years. The first was not my fault: my parents set three-year-old me up with three-year-old Tommy, son of their friends from Bible study. He brought me a little pink stuffed elephant, which somehow didn't turn me into a Republican.
It didn't take long for cupid to strike again and bring my second memorable Valentine's Day, it happened when I was six. Anthony and I had had one hot date playing Monopoly (he let me win) so Anthony's mom drove him over after school to drop off a little silver ring adorned with a turquoise heart. To my young, naive eyes, it was the coolest thing ever even if it didn't come from Mark Gathmann, and probably raised my expectations for the 21 Valentine's Days since.
However, the third memorable Valentine's Day was a long time coming and was memorable for completely different reasons. It happened in 2000, I was in Italy for Feb break, traveling Florence and Rome alone, having a last fling with myself before the looming transition from college student to functional adult. I spent a good part of that Valentine's Day atop the Duomo, proud of myself and winded for having climbed all those stairs, looking out over the red rooftops to the surrounding hills, considering all those who'd possibly stood there before me and feeling my insignificance. Later that day, I wrote out a postcard to my boyfriend at the time saying how much I wished he was there, but I never mailed it. (On a side note, I also failed miserably at finding candy hearts with little cheesy slogans on them in Italian. Apparently Brach's hasn't crossed the pond, so he wound up with a bottle of Grappa.)
This year's Valentine's Day was much more typical. I awoke with a little daydream of something nice that could have happened, it didn't. It never does. But I still let my mind wander to places reality refuses to go. I saw friends last night and then caught up on Scrubs and the OC, I did the stuff that makes me happy, and really, I haven't done a whole lot of that lately. Ever since Florence, Valentine's Day at its best is a chance to reconnect with myself and remember what the hell it is I'm doing here. As the song goes... "if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with."
It didn't take long for cupid to strike again and bring my second memorable Valentine's Day, it happened when I was six. Anthony and I had had one hot date playing Monopoly (he let me win) so Anthony's mom drove him over after school to drop off a little silver ring adorned with a turquoise heart. To my young, naive eyes, it was the coolest thing ever even if it didn't come from Mark Gathmann, and probably raised my expectations for the 21 Valentine's Days since.
However, the third memorable Valentine's Day was a long time coming and was memorable for completely different reasons. It happened in 2000, I was in Italy for Feb break, traveling Florence and Rome alone, having a last fling with myself before the looming transition from college student to functional adult. I spent a good part of that Valentine's Day atop the Duomo, proud of myself and winded for having climbed all those stairs, looking out over the red rooftops to the surrounding hills, considering all those who'd possibly stood there before me and feeling my insignificance. Later that day, I wrote out a postcard to my boyfriend at the time saying how much I wished he was there, but I never mailed it. (On a side note, I also failed miserably at finding candy hearts with little cheesy slogans on them in Italian. Apparently Brach's hasn't crossed the pond, so he wound up with a bottle of Grappa.)
This year's Valentine's Day was much more typical. I awoke with a little daydream of something nice that could have happened, it didn't. It never does. But I still let my mind wander to places reality refuses to go. I saw friends last night and then caught up on Scrubs and the OC, I did the stuff that makes me happy, and really, I haven't done a whole lot of that lately. Ever since Florence, Valentine's Day at its best is a chance to reconnect with myself and remember what the hell it is I'm doing here. As the song goes... "if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with."
posted by lunchbox at 7:29 AM
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