My son is the best boyfriend.
Now stop that. I don’t mean that in a Phil Donahue kind of way. We are not Tasmanian/*insert your country’s backwards, my-brother-is-my-uncle state here.*
I mean that I did done raised my boy right and he understands that it is just as important to show his love on the other 364 days of the year as it is on Valentine’s Day. And the true measure of love isn’t in the cost of the gift that he gives, it is in the actions he displays even when Hallmark doesn’t tell him to.
(I started this post back in February and probably got distracted by lots of shiny things and fairy floss, but I think the sentiment is still valid even though it is a little late.)
So I am hoping that on Valentine’s Day, you didn’t get roses and chocolates.
Now don’t get me wrong, just because I believe in the over commercialisation of the holidays in order for companies to sell us more things we don’t need, doesn’t mean that I don’t love the holidays like Charlie Sheen loves snorting coke off a hookers arse. And it certainly doesn’t mean that I hope that you end up miserable in a corner, crying because your significant other didn’t think to get you anything on Valentine’s Day.
It means that I think that you are worth way more than standard, no-brainer gifts. I hope that the gifts you receive required thought and/or effort. And here’s where the title of this post becomes a little less ‘call child services’ and a little more ‘give that lady a parenting medal’; my son remembered that months previously he was watching Man Vs Pin with his girlfriend and she had commented on how much she would like to make a ‘Cloud Light’. She hadn’t gotten around to it with all her uni studies and so he made her a cloud light, complete with little hearts raining from it.
My husband refuses to buy me flowers on Valentine’s Day, he says that he would rather grow me roses than buy me them so that I can have them whenever I want. He believes it is the thought and effort that shows how much he loves me, not the one off flashy gifts. So I often get a nice chai latte in bed on the weekend, or we go out to brunch because he knows that I am part Hobbit and brunch is my favourite meal of the day, or for a drive because he loves indulging my love of seeing new places. And I also get shiny things, but oftentimes we go shopping together after having lunch out so that I can choose the exact piece I want.
And although he doesn’t like Valentine’s Day, he acknowledges it because it makes me happy (in the same way I don’t celebrate his birthday because it makes him happy that I respect that he doesn’t do holidays). So this year, while he was out I built a fort in our room. I dragged the TV to the foot of the bed and used sheets to make a fort for us to watch telly and laugh and giggle like teenagers in. I used post-it notes to make an 8-bit heart on the bed and wrote something I love about him on each one. And I cut roses from the garden that I had been tending because I know he loves rose gardens, they remind him of his grandmother’s house in England. And for the record:
BEST VALENTINE’S DAY EVER!
Fort snuggles and laughter are the best kind of snuggles and laughter.
