Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day can be a bit forced. Everywhere you go, you see people hurriedly running around to buy flowers or chocolates so they won’t get into trouble. Yet I can’t help thinking about love this weekend.  Love is complex, painful sometimes, challenging. It is, in some ways, the greatest possible measure of our humanity, what makes us unique, like a conscience.

I surprised Maria. We went to Vermont and stayed at a beautiful old Inn and had a wonderful dinner and celebrated our relationship. People tell me I am giddy, sometimes, and I suspect that is true. Life without love can be empty, and barren. Love balances the tough parts of life, and brings hope, and a lifting of the heart. I think love is not easy to maintain. It requires work, thought, attention. It can wither. It changes the size and shape of things.

But you have to work at it. Remember the small things. Remember to say the words. Make time for it. Talk and connect, and talk and re-connect. It seems as fragile to me as it is powerful. People are cynical about love, and they say just wait, just wait. It fades. Maybe. But if so, that only makes it all the more precious while it lasts. I am not so foolish a writer as to write much about love. In heavy company there. But I don’t want to ignore it either. I am a lucky man.

Love looms large, and some of the other things I used to worry about have shrunk. Love insulates. They can take away money and success, and I won’t like it, but with love, I will do fine. That’s nice.

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Notes. Maria has a reception for her quilt show at the Crandall Public Library, Thursday, February 18, 5 to 7 p.m. She is selling a lot of her new dog-themed potholders. They are pretty neat. The public is welcome at the reception. Some new notecards are going up this weekend on the Redux gallery site.

Tomorrow, I’m working on a short story about a farmer and his border collie. I can’t wait to write it, as I have been thinking about it for days.