A friend of mine posed the question on Facebook, “What to
get the hubby for Valentine’s Day?” My answer was somewhat less then romantic,
but what passes for romantic these days is light years away from what it was
when I met my husband sixteen years ago. We met cute at the hotel where he was
working and I was staying (for weeks on end) as a business traveler. I thought
he was too young for me (though he was actually four years older than me), we
had an eight-hour long first date, we were engaged six weeks later and married
two years later.
Those two
years were spent sending hundreds of e-mails over the distance that divided us
while he finished college three hours away. I printed and saved every one of
them, using some in a scrapbook I created for him as a wedding gift. We burned
up the phone lines, visited as time and our school and work schedules allowed.
Weekend visits found us spending whole days in bed, watching endless movies or
taking day hikes and trips. I painstakingly drew a card for our one-year
anniversary and spent an insane amount of time laboring over a hand-drawn
replica of the first card he ever gave me to use as the cover of our wedding
program. He was equally as adept at sweeping, romantic gestures—one time spending
hours writing love notes on hundreds of mini Post-It notes and sticking them
all over our obscenely-large entertainment center for me to find when I came
home from work and having bouquets of flowers delivered to me at each of my
wedding showers.
Over the
years some of those more obvious and elaborate gestures faded away, with barely
a notice or a whimper. The occasional grand gesture, though fewer and farther
between, seemed well worth the wait—especially while trying to wrangle with two
little ones at home.
Then, as the
love affair of two settled into a family life of four, grand gestures were
replaced by things that showed we were standing the test of time. He might
spend a long, painful day rototilling the hardest ground ever to exist, so I
could have the flower garden I wanted. I might spend hours scouring help wanted ads for him, trying to help him find a job he really loved after the school he was working at closed.
So when he jokes about the weird
things I say I want for Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day—like a stack full of
magazines and the time to read them or a fountain soda brought home to surprise
me after a really long and cranky day—I can only smile. To me that means he
knows who I really am, what really makes me happy and what helps me get through
the day. Romance evolves over time. I know he always has my back (and my
favorite cupcakes) and that is the most romantic thing I can think of.
