Valentine's Day. You either love it or you hate it. And I've been thinking that with the exception of maybe Mother's Day/Father's Day it's unique amongst holidays for that distinction. No other holiday separates the haves and have nots, am and am nots like this one. Except for maybe the aforementioned Mothers and Fathers Day.
If you have someone to love, and as much as we kid ourselves about different types of love, we do mean romantic love, you're cool, you're in, you celebrate. If you don't then you don't. Unless of course you're South Korean where single people go out for Chinese food on Black Day in April. As someone who didn't get married until I was 32, I've had my share of single Valentine's Days.
The absolute worst was in Junior High. It was the school custom to sell carnations to students on Valentine's Day as a fundraiser for? I'm pretty sure that we were in 8th grade and I was sooooooooo not popular. In fact I'd even go as far as saying that I was the class geek. I did in fact receive a carnation that year. I was signed by boy X. The guy in the special needs program. I knew it was a joke and I was crushed. But not so, so, crushed when later in the day one of my friends laughed and told me that yes it was sent by a group of mean boys who spent a lot of time plotting it, not realizing that they were doing so right next to my friends locker. It was still a mean thing to do but at least knowing that made it a bit more tolerable. I tore up the tag and took the flower home to my mom claiming I had bought it for her. She was thrilled and never knew the difference.
A few years later I wrote an essay that I'm pretty sure was titled "Why I want to be spit over the heads of dancing couples." Does that tell you anything about my high school love life? And if you needed any further proof let me tell you about the time in high school math when one of my friends pointed out that I was the only virgin in the class. Ahhhhhhhh but now my daughter would be proud if she had such a label.
I seem to remember a Valentine's Day tea party in my 20s. It was thrown by a widow friend of mine and only single women of all ages were invited. It was very fun and celebrated all things girly and womanly. I wish that I could find more excuses to host tea parties.
Now I'm married and have someone to celebrate Valentine's Day with. On our first Valentine's Day together I was just a little bit pregnant and we went to the St. Louis zoo. The smell in the monkey house made me nauseous, however I don't think you have to be pregnant for the smell of a monkey house to make you sick. Exactly 3 years ago I was in the last week of my pregnancy with our youngest son. There was a blizzard on Valentine's Day that year. So much snow it made it impractical to go out but I needed to go out with just my Huggyband while I still could. I think we went to some pizza place? Anyways, it proves the point that sometimes it doesn't matter where you go as long as you're together. Last year Valentine's Day found us taking our daughter to a bible quiz meet in stuck-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-Ohio. When it came time for lunch coaches stayed with the team while Huggyband and I set off to find someplace to eat. God has a special place in his heart for anyone who gives up a holiday to be with kids who aren't even their own. We wandered around some country roads looking for civilization, thinking that the best we would get would be a Subway at a gas station. A fortuitous toss of the coin to determine left or right at an intersection lead us to a popular home cooking buffet restaurant. It was quite the find.
My Huggyband is not a romantic guy. He loves deeply but he doesn't romance. A year ago I wouldn't have even said that he loved deeply. Understanding how my husband shows love is one of the many things I've had to learn over the last 6 years. Yes I know that there are different love languages but learning to hear my husbands has taken practise. And it is just like learning a different language. When I first moved to Korea the language just sounded like random sounds to me. One day in the middle of all of those sounds I reached for a pencil and gave it to a co-worker. Why? Because she had asked for it in Korean and in all the random sounds my head registered the word "pencil." I had actually made sense of a sound. I had heard it. A few weeks later I said "yes" in English. Turns out that somebody had asked me a question in Korean and once again I had made enough sense of the jumble to understand. Learning how my husband says "I love you" has taken a lot of similar work.
I know a lady who one Christmas was waaaaaaaay over committed to making cookies for a church function. You know you're reaching maximum cookie capacity when the dozen number reaches double digits. By herself she was looking at pulling an all nighter. Her husband rolled up his sleeves and started to roll dough. At some point in greasing the five zillionth pan she looked at him and said, "right now you're screaming I love you."
I learned a lot from that story. I learned that sometimes actions do speak louder than words. that's something I really struggle with because words obviously come easy to me. The blessing of growing up in my house was that I heard my parents say that they loved and appreciated each other, and me, many times a day with many different words. Let's just say that my husband was differently blessed. If I watch closely I see the different ways he shows me he loves me.
He showed me he loved me the day our oldest son was born. Immediately after his birth Mr Moose had to be medi vaced to a hospital an hour away. I didn't need to ask, we didn't need to discuss, my Huggyband just went to be with him. The plan for where he would stay and what he would do about work or how and when I would meet up with him would be made later. He just had to be with that baby. He did what it took to care for his family no matter the inconvience. He's self sacrificing and puts our needs ahead of his constantly. Like the time he drove from Georgia to Ohio to look for work and stayed in his truck. Or the fact that even though his children have impressive wardrobes of clothes that take up two rods he rarely spends money on his own clothes. In 6 years of marriage I think he's only bought 6 shirts. He does what he has to do and in doing so he says "I love you."
I've never needed to ask or tell him what to do with the children. I'm not the mom who sits there and wonders how to get their husbands involved in childcare because he IS involved. He's involved at 3 in the morning with diapers and at 7 in the evening with science homework. He's stayed at home with 2 boys with strep throat so that I could get some much needed social interaction at church. I joke that some day we'll look back on Little Bunny FooFoo's baby pictures and wonder why his Daddy was always holding him. Couldn't he walk when he was two? Well yes of course he could but his Daddy insists on carrying him. Acts of love.
It drives me crazy that he takes forever to go grocery shopping. Last night I had him run into a store while I stayed in the van with 2 sleeping boys. There were only a few things on the list and I could have been in and out in 15 minutes, 30 tops. Huggyband was an hour. Why???????? Because I had asked him to pick up a few things for my lunch through the week and he had backtracked through the store 3 times to find me just the right stuff. Honestly, if I had been asked to pick stuff up for him I would have grabbed what was easy and told him he was lucky to get anything. For him the time he spent in the grocery store showed his love for me.
A month ago there were some moral charges levied against me. People were saying stuff that just wasn't true. Huggyband didn't even ask me for my side. Didn't question my actions at all, he just went to a meeting to defend them. And when I made the decision to leave the institution he left as well without hesitation as a show of support for me. Sort of like the time he went to bat for me over a bad meal at a restaurant. I would have been content to let it go but my Huggyband complained and got us 1 free meal a month for a year. Love.
This summer I was sure our marriage was going to fall apart. We were both so desperately ill and couldn't take care of ourselves let alone each other. I'll publicly admit that any and all thoughts of leaving were solely mine. D would never, ever leave me. Fortunately the wounds healed and on our 6th wedding anniversary we renewed our vows. Things are much, much better now. I love him and I'm glad to have him here. Happy Valentine's Day Huggyband!
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