Be my Valentine.......

And that's an awful lot!

Twenty two years ago today, I sent a Valentines card to a boy I'd enthusiastically kissed on New Year's Eve. Three days later we went out on a proper date for the first time. Still at school, barely eighteen, looking back we were only babies. Fast forward to right now, and we're an old married couple with a house, a mortgage and five kids to show for it. So I'm sure that you won't be surprised to know, that Valentine's Day means something very different now than it did all those years ago. Then, it was all about the grand(ish) gesture. Whether it was flowers, a cuddly Garfield or heart shaped balloons, it was important to me and, I suppose, to our identity as a couple, that Valentine's Day didn't pass unchecked. But that was then, and this is now, and life's very different and we're no longer eighteen. Please don't misunderstand - I'm not saying for one moment that I don't love getting flowers (all types except chrysanths and NEVER from a garage), and chocolates (you can't go wrong with Lindor), but I don't NEED them on Valentine's Day.... Gestures of love change and evolve along with a relationship and although the BIG GESTURE is very exciting, it's just the icing and not the cake. What's far more meaningful for me, are the countless little gestures on the ordinary days in the ordinary weeks that tell me I'm loved. Like getting into bed and finding my blanket already turned on, or my nightly cup of tea brought in on a tray. It's getting up with the kids at the weekend to give me a lie in, and then making breakfast in bed.  It's holding hands while watching the News or having a bath together late at night. It's being told that I'm beautiful with greasy hair and no makeup, and letting me warm my cold hands on his back. It's defrosting my car on a freezing morning, or quietly filling it with petrol just so I don't have to.

My card this year-the bar has been raised!

This everyday romance of ours may not be dramatic or spectacular or the stuff of movies, but it's the glue that keeps a relationship alive amidst homeworks and laundry, bills and school runs. It's the real deal. So a Happy Valentine's Day 2012 to my one and only Loverboy and here's to many more....