My First Valentine's Day....Alone

Well, maybe not my first. Actually, I had a lot of Valentine’s Days alone, but they were easy to get through because I was young, single and had a lot of young, single friends who were more than willing to go out and have fun without men on Valentine’s Day. We even made fun of our friends who DID have Valentines!

This year was completely different. Since I spent the past 19 years thinking that I had a Valentine for life, this one just plain sucked because my special guy was not there.

Not that we made a big deal out of Valentine’s Day. Every year, I would buy him a box of Queen Anne Chocolate Covered Cherries. And, in the beginning, he used to send me roses and big cards from the Hallmark Store, but after two kids and a mortgage, I would get the little card and the single red rose (and he still got the chocolates). All this meant so much to me....I didn't need the huge bouquet. Just the fact that I got a hug and a kiss and a “Happy Valentine’s Day” in the morning was special. Then we would go to work, come home, drive the kids to some activity, have dinner and go to bed. Dinner was usually pizza because he would say every year, “You shouldn't have to cook on Valentine’s Day”. That was sweet. That was all I needed.

This year, I got wrapped up in my son’s love life instead. He wanted to have dinner with his girlfriend, so I arranged with her mother (who is divorced AND happens to work in the same building as me!) for them to have dinner at a local nice Italian place. But of course, we had to eat, too, and our younger children had to eat, too, so the six of us had a nice dinner together. I’m sure that was not exactly my son’s idea of a romantic dinner with his girlfriend, but it had to do. We did let them sit next to each other.

The funny part was the strange looks we got the next day when we told our colleagues that we had Valentine’s dinner together the night before.