Twenty years ago on January 28 I met my husband, I was a nineteen year old college sophomore. Twenty years ago on Valentine’s Day I had my first Valentine. I wasn’t sure what to expect with our relationship being so new so I had low expectations. He gave me a card and we took a walk, he on his crutches with a sprained ankle, around the pond behind my dorm. My room overlooked that pond and every spring ducklings were born and raised on that pond. I loved that pond. I vividly recall spending time alone mourning the death of my maternal grandfather while sitting aside that pond when he passed away in March of my freshman year after a short battle with stomach cancer.
Twenty years ago in late March of that year I went home for Spring Break and was told by my dentist that I needed to have my wisdom teeth removed after returning to school. I was crushed, not only because I had never had surgery of any kind, but because I felt lonely. College was 1,000 miles away and I had no car and zero knowledge of oral surgeons in my college town.
I had no choice but to ask him, after he insisted, to drive me home post surgery. The days following the removal of my wisdom, a little over two months from meeting my first Valentine I decided I wanted to marry someone like him. Our relationship was new and I was 19 years old so I didn’t think it would be him! The moment I fell in love with him was the night I asked him to bring me a banana, my first solid food following my surgery, from the dining hall. After dinner he hadn’t come. I was disappointed and annoyed. Why ask if he could bring me anything from dinner if he wasn’t go to?! Then an hour or so later after the dining hall closed he rang the bell to my room from downstairs. I went down to open the door only to see him holding an entire bunch of bananas! There were none in the dining hall that night, he said, so he went to Walmart, at least a 15 minute drive from campus and bought me an entire bunch! What a guy!! Up until this point in my life I’m not sure I knew his “type” existed, at least it hadn’t in my life, not in the form of a boyfriend anyway.
So, here we are twenty years later with two respectful, compassionate and empathetic kids, going strong and I woke up sick as a dog on Valentine’s Day! (I never really met a sick dog, but for a lack of a more descriptive phrase I’ll use that one). My daughter wanted to bring me breakfast in bed with a get well card, as she had when her dad was sick the weekend before. I had no appetite and the idea of toast, as my husband suggested, sounded like swallowing sandpaper on my already sore throat. I told him, however, that bananas and strawberries sounded good. A few minutes later this amazing daughter of ours carried in a tray with sliced bananas her dad, my amazing husband, cut into hearts and strawberries she cut to look like hearts.
This Valentine’s Day marks the year I have exceeded the years of having a Valentine versus not having one.
That pond, humorously named Palmer “Lake” is now filled in and more University buildings sit atop it. My husband and I’s love has lasted longer than that pond. Twenty years later he is still my Valentine and has blessed me with two little loving Valentines, leaving me never to be Valentine-less again.
