My valentine

Valentine’s Day is pretty much a non-event for us every year and I wasn’t planning to pen anything down at all. Many years ago, we decided that it was an overpriced, commercialised phenomenon and we wanted to have nothing to do with it.

But then, as fate would have it, I was asked by my students to help them out as a guest for their radio talkshow assessment today. And the theme? Why Valentine’s Day, of course.

As I looked through the list of questions that they had prepared for me, my horror grew.

Tell us about your first valentine’s date (if you remember)
What’s the most extreme thing you did?
What’s your favourite memory/sweetest thing your husband did

NOTHING. CAME. TO. MY. MIND.

Seriously. I dug and dug around in the archives of my mind and I came up with NOTHING.

Of course, the fact that I am extremely sleep-deprived and therefore has an impaired memory (it’s been medically proven!) doesn’t help. And, err, we haven’t celebrated Valentine’s Day in, like, forever. Plus, our first Valentine’s Day was over 14 years ago.

So I sent Mr Thick an SOS text. And he was as equally clueless as I was.

Hah!

I thought I was going to ruin the students’ assessment because I would have nothing to say, seeing how I remember nothing. But, as it turns out, I did have things to share and as I was talking, it struck me that I, and we, have really changed and remained unchanged over the years.

Back when I was much younger (UH-HMM), I had these silly, fancy notions of love and romance. You know, the grand gestures – dinner, flowers, the works. But now that we are older and wiser (and really tired because the other love of our lives DOES NOT SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT), my ideas of the perfect relationship and the perfect date have changed.

At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter what I do with my husband. We could be sitting down on the sofa and watching Glee together, or sitting down for a cup of coffee while the littlest of us all slept in the stroller, or lying in bed and talking about our day. It’s all very simple, and mundane, and boring, and nondescript.

But it doesn’t matter. Because we are doing it together.

And my idea of the perfect relationship? When two imperfect souls meet and fit perfectly well together.

I don’t know why I never realised it earlier but it struck me one night that hey, when he starts telling me about a joke or making a funny remark, I instinctively know where he is going. We can complete each other’s sentences. And we pick up each other’s slack. When one is sick, the other takes over automatically. And we are always fighting – to let the other charge his or her phone, to let the other have the last juicy bit of dinner etc.

We fight – but for each other.

And that’s what really counts, at the end of the day, even more so than beautiful flowers and lavish gifts.

Happy Valentine’s Day to the best partner I could ever ask for. ❤