Many millennials reading this may remember the cheap plastic roses that were sold at high schools on the week of Valentines Day. Most likely a fundraiser from student government, you could buy a rose for $1 with a note attached and on the big day the roses would be passed out to the lucky recipients. My high school was particularly invested in this tradition and when that door would swing open in the middle of Algebra class, even the teachers appeared interested in this disruption. The amount of white ("friendship"), pink ("i like you"), and red ("i love you") roses floating in the halls and classrooms was enough to permanently scar me into hating that ridiculous holiday. I remember spending a good portion of my extra cash on white roses for my best friends but in those four years of high school, I never held single pink or red rose.
Fast forward to college, where now the plastic roses were replaced with real roses, and if you were lucky, a date to the Pi Kappa Phi winter formal. I watched as my roommates went on real first dates and I couldn't believe how grown up it all sounded. Love seemed to be everywhere, year after year, and yet the only flowers in my dorm room where the ones I doodled on the back of my Human Psychology notebook.
In my twenties I dated quite a bit. Some long term and some never lasting long enough to make it to Valentine's Day. And still I began to wonder after all these years how a real Valentines Day would feel. Would I want someone to shower me with roses and chocolates and hand written cards? Was this thing that I had grown to believe I wanted so badly really as great as I dreamed it would be? Was it worth all the hype? And even bigger question, was I worthy of the hype?
The answer was Yes. Yes to it all.
Four months short of my 30th birthday I married Will. It will be ten years this April and it has been ten Valentine's Days filled with bouquets of flowers, hand written cards, and more love than a million plastic student government roses.
And then just when I thought Valentines Day couldn't get any better, on Valentine's Day 2016, Will and I gave each other the best gift imaginable. Arriving three weeks early on February 14, our first son Liam was born. And if that wasn't enough, exactly three years later, again on February 14th, our second son Bear was born, officially making this day my most favorite holiday of all. Something that we didn't plan on, but it only made sense that our first two children born from so much love would come on the ultimate day of love. Each Valentine's Day since they have been born has been full of not just the love for each other but the love for these two little boys as well.
Now here I am and as I quickly glance at the bouquet of Valentines roses on our dining room table that Will bought me, I am rushing out the door carrying birthday balloons and dinosaur shaped cupcakes and I can't help but smile. It's been two decades since I walked the halls of the high school, empty handed and with an empty heart. I wish I could tell that tall lanky girl to just be patient. To just wait a little bit longer. Because the roses will show up one day and so much more. There is simply no other day these two boys could have been born. A birthday surrounded by love for the girl who longed for roses but dreamed of babies.
Happiest Valentines Day from our family to yours! xoxo
