Every Kiss Begins With...

O.k. Please tell me I'm not the only person who's fed up beyond belief with the rash of jewelry store commercials right now. I was watching t.v. last night for maybe an hour and must have seen - no exaggeration - maybe 15 commercials. Maybe I'm just bitter about Valentines Day in general - as it's never been one of my favorite holidays. Why? Because it's basically become a mass-produced, overly commercialized holiday that is all about fulfilling unattainable expectations and little, or sadly nothing to do with demonstrating how you actually care about someone.

It seems that people get all verklempt around this time of year wringing their hands about the holiday desperately trying to find the "perfect" gift. A veritable flood of magazines {incidentally I don't read many "women's magazines" because their constant drone of "Be A New Woman, here are 15,702 ways to make him want you!" articles are a little offputting. Following their logic the only way that I can succeed as a woman is by being some guy's great lay? Um, no thank you. I'm not sure why or when Cosmo et al went from being an "empowering" magazine to "Fucking for Dummies *Now with Copious Advertisements Showing Emaciated Women That Are Beautiful Because We Said So!*" but I digress...}, t.v. shows and radio ads are stressing how important it is to give the "perfect" gift to your "special someone" for Valentines Day. And why is it that this day is so important? Shouldn't the way you treat each other the other 364 days a year be just as important?

And in doing so, they intone that if you (god forbid) don't have someone special to spend your day with you're a loser. [And Yes, I have been dumped on Valentines Day. Perhaps there is the source of my true bitterness toward it?] And if you don't buy diamonds, or chocolate, or lingerie, or flowers - well, you don't really care enough about the person you're with.

Maybe I'm the one who just doesn't "get it" - but thinking back to the most romantic things I've ever gotten in my life, none of them was flowers, candy or jewelry. About five years ago, a bunch of friends (a group of probably 20 males and females together) and I were sitting around in a bar after classes talking about the most romantic thing that someone could do for you. Not one of us listed jewelry, roses, candy, etc. Instead it was a homemade card, poetry, just listening, etc. I was single at the time, and I said I had always fantasized about someone throwing up little pebbles to my window - so I would open the window and have them tell me they loved me. Perhaps a little too Romeo and Juliet - but whatever.

A few weeks later, tied to my door (I lived on the 16th floor of a high rise) with a ribbon was a plastic sack of tiny pebbles. There was no note, no indication of who sent it. Obviously, I have no way to know if it was just random occurrence, or if it was someone making reference to what I had said. But I kept those pebbles in a glass vase on my nightstand for a very long time as a reminder that it is the small things in life that matter most.

I probably wear the diamond earrings that Michael bought me as a surprise a few years ago 6 out of 7 days a week. But the most romantic thing he did for me was mowing the yard. Seriously. We'd been married about 2 years, and I was in the kitchen washing dishes, and he was in the back yard mowing. He came in, hot and sweaty and yelling that there was something I had to come see. When I went out there, he had mowed I (heart) You in the grass. Now, you have to understand, Michael is not a mushy person. He's not the type to write gushy poetry or sing love songs, but more than anything else he's ever done - that touched me.

So anyway, I'm curious - what are your thoughts on Valentines' Day? How do you celebrate it, if you do? What's the most romantic thing someone could give you (or has, if you want to give us the details)?

Be as chatty as you want in the comments.

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And as to the last post, thank you for your kind thoughts. I didn't post that to have you shower me with praise, though... as shameful as it is to admit - far too often I look the other way when someone is in need. Too often I pretend that they aren't there, that I don't see them. Bobby touched me in a way that I didn't think possible, and I haven't stopped thinking about him. For the last week, I've been circling the neighborhood around the restaurant- trying to find him. When it snowed Saturday I cried, worried about him in the cold. I searched for him for close to 40 city blocks. But what I realized in doing so, is that it's not just him that needs help - that needs to be treated with respect and love. It's the woman carrying two kids and pushing another in a stroller. It's the 10 year old kid wearing clothes that don't fit. It's the attorney in the next office, the teller at the bank, the cranky neighbor who *still* has their christmas lights on when I get home at night. It's all of us.