Today will be the 29th Valentine’s day I’ve shared with my husband, and while I’ve never had the strewn rose petals, Champagne dinner in view of the Eiffel Tower, and piece of jewelry that costs as much as a car kind of day, I think we’ve started to get it right. Or at least we get the wine right.
Our first Valentine’s day, my husband (then-boyfriend) and I had only been together a few weeks. I was SO excited–it was the very first time I’d managed to have a boyfriend on Valentine’s Day. If I wasn’t as old as dirt, I would have dreamt of Instagramming the flowers and jewelry and general envy-inducing romantic gestures I was sure would ensue. I was crushed when he regretfully announced that we wouldn’t be able to do anything on Valentine’s day because he had a huge test the next day. Never one to interfere with scholastic achievement, I heartily endorsed his decision and said I understood. I did, however, plan to surprise him by dropping off a card and some valentine cookies to sustain him during his all-night study session. I walked the 3 miles between our colleges in the Pittsburgh winter (meaning it was windy as hell and either drizzling or drizzle sleeting) with my gifts. I arrived at his fraternity to find his room empty, but the raucous cheers from downstairs led me to the dining hall-cum-beer-pong arena. My boyfriend was well into a closely contested umpteenth round of beer pong. He drunkenly assured me that he loved me SO MUCH and the new plan was to get up really, really early and study then. Oh well, he must have been charming as well as smart because he managed to pass the class and keep his girlfriend. The next year, his college arranged a Valentine’s dinner complete with servers and white tablecloths at a price so reasonable that even as poor college students we were able to attend. It was lovely with the candle-lit tables and a three-course meal—but not exactly romantic because everyone was so excited about the getting a steak dinner for cheap that half of his fraternity went with us. It ended up being memorable because one of the guests at our table got clonked in head with the serving platter, not once, but twice by the grumpy, harassed servers.
The next few years are a mash-up of missing dinner together because of law school or grad school night classes. I think we managed one Valentine’s dinner out a restaurant before the kids started coming along. We had no family close by to watch the babies and I think available teenage babysitters are a myth, like Bigfoot–except some people claim to have actually seen Bigfoot. So began our tradition of Valentine’s dinner at home.
Some years we did the full fondue dinner with cheese, fillet mignon, and chocolate and other years I was so exhausted by organizing and running four classroom Valentine’s parties that we ordered pizza, especially the year that I decided on February 13 that all of our kids would bring in handmade heart crayons as favors. I didn’t realize how many crayons we would have to unwrap and chop to fill the heart mold (and in a moment of foolish frugality I had only bought 1 tray of heart-shaped molds) to make 100 or so heart-shaped crayons. I underestimated how long it would take to melt crayons in a low temp oven. Based on the number of melted crayons I found in my minivan, the outdoor table, and the swing set, I thought it would only take a few minutes. Add to that the painstaking precision with which the kids chose the exact color combinations of each heart, and that the 1000 broken crayons we already had were not enough and I had to run to the grocery store to buy several more overpriced packages, I’m sure you get the idea. The next year, everyone brought in Fun Dip valentines.
Now, there are no more classroom parties and while the kids are old enough not to need sitters (but they don’t babysit either), I have Valentine’s Day down pat. I buy a couple of fillets for the kids, prime porterhouse for us (they think the delicious fat is gross) and round it out with potatoes and a something green (for us, they think anything green is gross, too.) And then we choose a rocking bottle of red and a pink flavor of Italian soda. For less than we’d spend on a mediocre bottle of wine at restaurant, we have a divine meal and a sublime Cab. And I can guilt the kids into doing the dishes.