The greeting card, jewelry, and floral industry plague a.k.a. Valentine's Day is upon us again. Demonstrate your love for __fill in the blank__ with pricey heart-shaped thingamajigs! I am whole-heartedly (Ugh, I typed heart.) in favor of taking the time to express one's love for others. That's a great plan. Jesus did exactly that over and over again. It just bugs me to be inundated with hearts, flowers, cards, stuffed aimals, and other pricey disposables gew-gaws because today is a date set aside to remind people to demonstrate affection.
Don mentioned that his men's group was discussing the necessity of providing an appropriate gift for their wives to mark February 14th. Don was in the rather unique position of saying that a bouquet or arrangement of flowers would bring on paroxysms of grief and a spate of recriminations from his wife. One of the other guys, a fellow who has actually gone the distance of sending troubadors to serenade his wife at work, wondered if I really meant it when I said I wanted no gifts today. Don explained that I am just wired to be a penny-pincher so that buying flowers on the day of the year when they are most expensive does not demonstrate my incalculable worth to him, but rather says, "You really don't get me!"
So, how do we avoid the Valentine's Day Massacre of love? We don't. We have fun with it. Today's meals will feature heart-shaped red, white, and pink food. Breakfast consisted of pink-tinted eggwhites with diced red bell pepper under melted swiss cheese served alongside cinnamon rolls with pink icing and sliced apple. Dinner will see a dish of spaghetti including heart-shaped pasta on the table. (It's fun to think up foods in the appropriate colors and shapes, and the kids love this hold-over from their toddler days when I used the technique to teach them their colors and shapes.) The females in our household are all wearing pink and red, and both girls are dressed in Valentine tees from Gram & Papa for their class parties. We will bypass the worst excesses of this day, but we will seek to demonstrate love for one another today.
As for the flowers and candy, Don showed up with a single red rose and a York peppermint patty on a nonspecific Wednesday morning a couple of weeks ago. He does these things "just because", and they mean more to me that way.
1 comment:
A new RED truck. Coolest truck he's ever had...those were his words. Wouldn't you say Valentine's Day is just the right time to get his very first RED truck. That's was your Dad's response to the Valentine's blues.
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