Voices from the Moon

Valentine’s Day meant little to me for a long time. There was a period in high school in which I rebelled against it, wore black when everyone around me was receiving candy grams from crushes and flowers from parents. My parents weren’t those kind of parents. We didn’t require flowers. Then I became rather indifferent. It was nice for the people who liked it but I got nothing from it, even when there was someone around to celebrate it with. But something’s softened inside me since I met my husband. I still don’t require flowers— though he brought them to me and they’re lovely— or anything special, but my life seems more open to love and I more concerned with giving it and cultivating it and nurturing it. And even celebrating it. All the people I love— my family and friends and their kids and the strangers who need a little more of it everyday. I’m more inclined to think of love every day, not just Valentine’s Day, and that’s because I know it now, really, intimately, and know all that I can’t know about it too, the mystery of it. I’m grateful for it and changed by it and hopeful that all the people around me have enough of it.