As Valentine’s Day approaches I realize I will be scrambling at the last minute.
I’m not always like that, but this year that day when we are encouraged to let our loved ones know how much we care seems to have snuck up so quickly.
When we were kids there was always a dilemma. If you purchased the Valentine card packages, the cards went from big to small.
Who did you give the big one to? What if someone gave you the big one and it made you feel uncomfortable?
Every year one of my oldest friends sends us giant cookies. They are large heart-shaped, with pale pink icing and our names in dark red glaze.
Each cookie also has a heart-shaped candy in the centre.
My grown up kids are living around the province, and yet Catherine still mails them each their cookie.
I lived with Catherine in Winnipeg for a few years and one year we put on a Valentine’s party.
It was 1981 and we were determined to find strawberries for part of the menu. Neither of us had a car and it meant a long bus ride to a specialty market across the city to purchase our gold.
Times have changed.
On Valentine’s Day in 2011, my husband and I were living apart. He had accepted a position in Williams Lake and I was still in Prince Rupert with our three sons.
During a weekend writing workshop I composed a poem and in the end sent it to him for Valentine’s Day.
I hadn’t written a poem for him since we’d started dating 27 years before. I had a lot of fun.
This week when I asked people the question of the week, if they had plans for Valentine’s Day, retired radiologist Mary Trott’s answer made me smile.
“I wait for inspiration to strike at the last minute and then we are both surprised,” she told me with a twinkle in her eyes.
Hopefully I’ll figure out just how to let my husband and children know how much they’ve taught me about this crazy thing we call love.
Monica Lamb-Yorski is a staff writer with the Williams Lake Tribune/Weekend Advisor.