My Love, My Valentine

{lunch with my Sawyer valentine}

{from when Jeffrey and I first dated}

I've had that old "My Valentine" song by Martina McBride playing to myself all day, no doubt put in my mind long ago by some woebegone Delilah radio show, now coming back to serenade my Valentine's day with: 

"You're all I need, my love

My Valentine."

The fact is, it resonates so well with our lives and how I feel today that I don't mind humming it over and over as I think about all the wonderful experiences I've had with my two valentines.  

The first thing I ever gave Jeff, besides my phone number, obviously, was a pack of valentine tissues. Yep. It was Valentine's day 2008 and we had just met a month ago and had been on a disastrous date or two, but were still spending a lot of time together.  I already had plans for the evening, and Jeffrey and I were not at all romantic at this point, but for some reason I felt compelled to get him a gift. Hence the tissues with a cheeky note written on a hot pink, heat-shaped sticky note: "Don't cry. Happy VDay. -Rachel."  

Just a few nights prior to tissue-gift-giving we'd been together making glitter-covered valentines to hand out to other people.  We shopped for the paper and glue and glitter together (there was some "buy this, not that" and "do you have to buy that?" oh and the first of many, "you can't get that" from Jeff) then got crafty at Jeff's stinky old apartment. 

Two years later, Valentine's day 2010, we were still sitting in a stinky old apartment sharing Vday festivities.  I was fresh off of a chemo treatment and Jeff was worn down from school and work and a the trials of a sick wife, so we sat in our love nest and watched a movie while sipping hot chocolates my mom had brought us (she was in town to care for me that week).

Now, three years later, we're taking our love child to the playground at the mall to celebrate the day.  We won't have dinner until late, 'til after that little valentine goes to bed, and then there will be gift-giving, just like on that first Valentine's day 5 years ago. To accompany these memories and plans for tonight, I sing to myself:

"...even if the sun refuse to shine,

Even if romance ran out of rhyme,

You would still have my heart

Until the end of time

'Cause all I need 

Is you, my Valentine."

Happy day of love, my two favorite Valentines in the universe.