Beyond Chocolate and Roses

Cupid’s flapping his wings and today the little cherub will be expecting his due.

With apologies to all the local businesses that make a lot of cash on Valentine’s Day, I have to admit it’s not my favorite holiday.

Maybe it’s the college years spent working at a florist, when the price of roses was jacked up all the way from the growers to the shop. But more likely it was watching men parade in like the march of the damned, choosing something that would keep the queen content.

Or the girlfriend.

One regular customer would always get a box of red roses for his girlfriend and some plant for the wife. When I finally quit the job, I promised to work Valentine’s Day for them. Somehow, the cards got switched on the roses and the plant. Not sure how that happened. But I’m pretty sure he had one very happy wife and one very angry girlfriend that day.

Still, there’s a romantic heart beating inside me that has been fueled over the years by being blessed with a very long and happy marriage — a marriage none of our friends or relatives or even my minister thought would last.

Tom was 19 and I was 21 when we decided to get married after only knowing each other for a couple of months. There were no shotguns or imminent births involved. We just wanted to be together for the rest of our lives.

Bets were made at the wedding. Most were astonished as the decades passed and other marriages failed. Who knows why one survives and another doesn’t? And what makes two people believe, as Paul Newman said, that there’s no reason to settle for hamburger when you have steak at home?

At first, we told people who asked the secret of a happy marriage that it was simple. Neither one of us wanted custody of the kids.

Then we joked that we liked being with someone who remembered us when we were young, thin and beautiful. We were just working from memory, still seeing that same person who made our heart race the first time we set eyes on each other.

That’s not to say there haven’t been some ripples, and some even included flowers.  A few years ago, my complacent husband made a bad error.

I was at Costco getting a few things before we were supposed to go out that night for an anniversary dinner. I called to make sure I had gotten everything and he said, "Hey, while you are there, why don’t you pick up some flowers for yourself?”

I explained, not so patiently, that the reason getting flowers from your husband is such a treat isn’t just the bouquet, but the idea that some thought and care went into the selection. He stated that it just made more sense for me to get them since I was already there and he would have to get up, get into the car and drive to the same spot I was to buy the same flowers. He finally bowed to the inevitable, although I’m sure he still believes he was right.

For almost a year after that, my neighbors would talk about how wonderful Tom was because at least once a week, he came home from work bearing flowers.

The march of the damned.

People say Livermore’s a good place to raise children. It also seems like a great place to maintain a marriage. I watch old and young couples walking around town, often holding hands. I see my friends and neighbors grow older with their loves. I see Michael and Jacqui Nichols tooling around in their electric car, enjoying their early retirement.

I love when relationships get to a place where you can just be yourself. I laugh when I hear my neighbor Don Staysa replies to a “honey-do” request from his wife, Lynn, with the quip, “You can get your next husband to do that for you.”

And then, of course, he does exactly as she asks.

We don’t need a special day to remind us how lucky we are to still be in love. But I wouldn’t say no to a nice bunch of flowers or an evening out.