My Relationship with Valentine's Day: it's complicated

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Let me start this post by saying that I have a complicated relationship with Valentine's Day.  Growing up, there were the class parties and candy and cookies and Conversation Hearts (my favorite candy only available one time of year.) And then junior high... when I was the perpetual "single girl courier" of our friend group who got the "Hey, will you give this rose/carnation/tiny stuffed animal to so-and-so when you see her in class?" High school was pretty much the same. Still single. Still lots of attached friends. But this time, they could meet each other between classes and I didn't have to deliver quite so many things. 

By college, I was determined to own my singleness so I would invite all the single girls/girls-whose-Valentine-lived-too-far-away over for dinner and a movie on Valentine's Day night. (It was Galentine's before Galentine's was a thing.) 

When I lived in Tanzania, Valentine's wasn't a thing and I was free of it for a few years. 

So when I got back stateside and Husband and I started dating, I filled him in on all my complicated weirdness about Valentines. And I made him swear up, down and sideways that he wouldn't use Valentines to do anything weird and crazy, like propose. (which he didn't. phew). And he did great navigating that "first-Valentine's-Day-as-a-couple" weirdness. Italian restaurant, live music, flowers, sweet card. (and by the way, he did propose a month later on a random Sunday in March, the day after our 6 month anniversary. But that's another story.)

Fast forward to a year later, our first Valentine's day as a married couple and I'm 6 weeks pregnant with Oldest. Husband had been asking for days if I wanted to go out or stay in or celebrate or ignore the day all together. By that point in the pregnancy, I was on "restricted movement", almost to full bed rest, and the last thing I wanted to think about was anything fancy or crowded. So in tears, I finally admitted, "I just really want pizza and beer and I'm sad that I can't have it." So the creative man I married came home with a heart shaped pizza from Flyer's and a 6 pack of non-alcoholic beer to celebrate our first Valentine's Day as a married couple. 

Our second Valentine's Day, we had just survived our 3rd medical procedure with Oldest and we were only a few months away from his heart surgery. So again, we chose heart-shaped pizza to celebrate and a tradition was born. 

A few years ago, during a particularly hard semester of school, I cancelled Valentine's Day. In a fit of frustration and burn-out, I told Husband not to bother with flowers or cards or anything. I didn't want to be the last thing he thought about after his papers were turned in but I also didn't want to feel guilty about getting in the way of his school stuff, so I cancelled it. "Valentine's Day is now a family holiday!" I declared. "We'll have pizza and root beer and celebrate with the kids. Nothing else!" And Husband surprised me. He had pre-ordered purple roses from our local florist and he picked them up along with my favorite coffee from our local coffee shop. and it was perfect. 


The next year, same. A perfectly crafted arrangement of flowers from a local friend, in a flower pot that I still use to this day. and my favorite coffee from the local coffee shop. Still heart shaped pizza and root beer with the kids, but that one little special thing just for me as well. 



Last year, Valentine's Day was complicated with 25,000 extra people in town. (again, we can talk about that later.)

This year... it's weird. Everything is weird. 

This year, the kids and I made 8-bit heart shaped cookies and pretended that reading the fractions in the recipe counted for a math lesson and that writing Valentine's to cousins counted for Reading and Writing. We still made the pizza, but it was eaten super late after martial arts practice and instead of watching the Charlie Brown Valentine's Special, we started our family Lent liturgy and talked about Ash Wednesday. When I sent Husband to the store to pick up vegan cheese, I made him promise not to also pick up flowers from Kroger. And he didn't. This year, there were no flowers in a pot or vase because I'm already giving away lots of other flower pots and vases and I didn't want to have to deal with another one. 

So this year... heart shaped pizza? Check. 

Root beer? well, we forgot that. 

a sweet card? Check... given after we got the kids in bed because he laid it out on the counter and I put a book bag on top of it so I didn't see it until later. 

local coffee? Check... on Saturday when our kids got to hang with their favorite babysitter and we got out of the house for a few hours. 

Transition is weird. Moving is hard. Keeping a family together takes work. But we feel grateful that some of our family traditions are carrying us through the weird and the hard and we're looking forward to sharing heart-shaped pizza with friends and neighbors in Albania next year. 


Oh, I did put on a pink skirt and purple sparkle eye-shadow. Because my 6 year old is currently into all the sparkly makeup and why should kids get to have all the fun??








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