A Snowy Valentine

Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
-- Amy Bloom

It's usually Dad who posts something romantic on this blog, although I am supposed to be the wordier person in this marriage. Some people might have imagined that I would be the more romantic person in this marriage, too, but I will tell you a secret -- though it's not much of a secret, really, to regular readers of this blog: that's not true. Dad is one deeply romantic guy, and I am one profoundly lucky woman. Today, it's my turn to say so.

Thirty years ago today, just a few weeks after moving into our first apartment on Washington Street in Greenwich Village, we celebrated our first Valentine's Day by independently buying each other the same gift -- a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream sherry. (Somebody must have told the Harvey's people about that, because much later on, I believe they made a commercial with that plot. Furthermore, Wal-Mart apparently has a blog somewhere about a couple who drive cross-country visiting Wal-Marts along the way. Dad and I have somehow become the model for corporate American marketing schemes!)

Anyway. Thirty years later, I'd like to go out and buy a commemorative bottle of Valentine's Day Harvey's, but we already have some, and anyway, there's a blizzard out there today. So instead, let me just say this: Tom, for thirty years, you've been my Valentine, my rock, my sweetheart, and my friend. You fix my car, you put up with my checkbook, you make me popcorn, and lately, you even cook my dinner! You are endlessly surprising, endlessly interesting, and better yet, after all these years, you are still the funniest person I know.

As people do, the kids who bought the Harvey's in New York City soon changed into different people, who soon changed again, and then again, and again, and again. You remember me in each of those incarnations, and I remember you, and it's the great miracle of my life that we have managed to love one another through them all. We have built a family and a history together. I can't wait to find out what we are going to build together next. Happy Valentine's Day, honey. I love you.