Valentine's Day Gone By

I have failed miserably in my quest to be a romantic person.

There was an article somewhere on the web the other day - or was it in the paper? - about the degeneration of the male initiative towards romance due to completion of the "conquest" on which all the energy and focus was spent. In short, once a man gets married, his creative drive in those areas wavers, wobbles, and then falls completely apart.

I'm not in complete agreement with the theory, but there are some aspects of it that ring true. When a young man is looking for that special someone, generally there is much more available time and energy for those pursuits. A young unmarried person is not so caught up in the complexities of family life, the financial challenges of arranging for the future education of offspring, the halfway-through-life questions of "where am I going with my career?" and "what will I have accomplished when all is said and done?" and the overwhelmingly depressing realization that the best years of the physical body are long gone. Rather, a young man is caught up in the deep curiosity for the unknown, the mystery that surrounds someone of the opposite sex, the anticipation of dreams that may come true (and the concern over dreams that may not).

Nowadays it is not difficult to find the energy or the time for creativity and romance, but it is extremely problematic to find them both at the same time; they rarely occur at a common point. Most of the energy of the day is spent at work, dealing with the ever-increasing responsibilities of the workplace, or in dealing with the offspring as they are now old enough to warrant a higher level of attention on the part of the parents. By the end of the day, though there is still time enough to spend on creative pursuits, the energy is gone. Indeed, many a night I find myself sitting on the couch next to my Lovely Lady after the children have gone off to bed, barely able to compose a simple sentence, slogging through websites on the laptop or listening to the drone of the evening news, all the while knowing it would be best to just go to bed.

St. Valentine's Day was dramatically undertoned this year, perhaps partly because it took place on a Thursday and I was working late anyway, and partly because I was nearly completely exhausted, mentally and emotionally, from all the responsibilities of management at work. Yet it would've been inexcusable to come home with absolutely nothing to offer my Lovely Lady, who puts up with so much and receives so little in return.

The thought of flowers and chocolate had occurred to me, but those kinds of things do not speak well for me; the fragrance of flowers brings on sensations of sneezing, and chocolates, while pleasing to the taste, have their own kind of guilt attached (as we are all trying to maintain our physiques).

Yet there was another idea which had occurred to me sometime last week, a little thought in the back of my head which had popped into being after visiting a bookstore to purchase The Three Musketeers for Adam (who has a book report due soon). There were many books in the bookstore (isn't that odd?). And there were quite a few for which it might seem that my Lovely Lady might have an interest, chiefly in area of biographies of those people for whom she has some high regard. Might it not be possible to give to her a gift of books, so that she might have something more long-lasting than roses or chocolates? Might not that be seen as something more useful, more instructive, more entertaining, more logical?

Ah, therein lies the rub. St. Valentine's Day is not intended for usefulness, instruction, entertainment, nor for logic. It is intended for such colors, lights, feelings and textures as would convey ideas of love and romance and sentiment and passion. Roses, poetry, candelight, aromatic incense, and soft music - these are the things which should surround the Day of Love.

But, alas, the majority of my energy and creativity were gone; what little remained was sufficient only to get me through the late-evening bedtime rituals of prayers and kisses for the children. The only spark of mischief left in me was to place the gifts on the little table next to the couch while she was otherwise occupied upstairs with the girls so that she did not find them til she came down again.

It seems that as the years go by, my ability to plan ahead for such things as these withers away, especially as more of my mind is taken up with concerns of work (a hazard of improving situation). Each year, I promise myself that I'll do better the next time. And each year, the day finds me unprepared yet again.

Thank God for my Lovely Lady, who forgives much of her feeble-minded husband! She is truly "a wife of noble character", and deserving of so much more.