Warning: This Blog Is About To Get All Soppy*

*Which is so out of character, I seriously considered starting yet another blog, for my weak days.

Today is St Valentine’s Day.  The Hub and I never celebrate it.  He’s thoughtful of and caring towards me.  He gives me love notes, flowers and little gifts all year round.   You’ve heard me boast about it.  He can also be a great big jerk sometimes, but that’s marriage for you.

The Hub doesn’t believe in St Valentine’s Day.  He thinks that people shouldn’t need a special day  to show their love; they should show it all the time.

That puts me in a bit of pickle: I’m not a romantic like the Hub and my way of showing my love is not spitting in his dinner when I’m mad at him.  He doesn’t think that’s particularly in my favour.

So, I did what I always do when I’m confronted with an emotional conundrum: I wrote a poem. Enjoy, and don’t think too badly of me.

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What’s Love?

For Paul, the love of my life

 

What’s love?
It’s your hand holding the sick bowl, wiping my face.
It’s crying for someone who gave you a lifetime of grief;
because I loved her and you love me. It’s letting me hate you in
hormonal periods. It’s sitting, sweating in your undies
because I’m cold and won the fight over the central heating.
It’s playing taxi. It’s calming me on kitchen days. It’s buying
takeaways when the wallet can’t take it but soothing failed.
It’s tolerating my beliefs, so crazy to you. It’s your gift of two
beloved boys, knowing they displaced you, and not caring.
It’s golf balls at Christmas and Shakespeare at fifty.
It’s doing what I ask when you really don’t want to.
It’s putting me first.
It’s time, not money.
Sometimes, it’s money.
It’s the everyday ordinary and the occasionally sublime.
It’s blaming the world for my setbacks, when you know it’s
really me. It’s sending me to South Africa, France, Widnes.
It’s love notes in my laptop, my diary, the fridge.
It’s accepting my fat. It’s rejoicing when I’m slim.
It’s rocking a colicky baby all night then working all day.
It’s no sleep. It’s sore feet.
It’s working too hard, too long, too far away.
It’s coming home again. It’s trust. It’s not eating burgers
because there’s steak at home. It’s knowing what matters.
It’s hard times, unhappy times, tragic times.
It’s staying together.
It’s you and me, two kids and thirty years.
It’s you.
That’s love.

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That’s got to pay off at least a year’s supply of hearts written on milk bottles, hasn’t it?