Happy Valentine's Day!

Once upon a time, I worked in a San Francisco flower shop. Valentine's Day was the biggest event of the year. It's like the Christmas season for most retailers, except that all the excitement is crammed into one day instead of six weeks. I can remember cleaning roses, dozen after dozen of them: stripping the stems of the thorns, plucking excessive leaves so the water wouldn't get clogged and prematurely cloudy, arranging, wrapping, delivering...you get the idea. My favorite part were the messages we transcribed on the little cards that come with the flowers. The content varied from romantic to sweet to funny to downright creepy. Sometimes two dozen went out to two different women, charged to a single credit card. Whatever. Not. My. Business. You could send flowers to your pet goat and I didn't care, long as I was making time and a half and your Visa went through.

So yes, Valentine's Day is overly commercial. Just like every other holiday in America. I admit, I've been a direct participant in the holiday profit-making machine. But it's still a wonderful day. Today couples will declare their affections for one another, maybe for the first time, maybe for the fiftieth. Boys and girls will receive those little valentines with Snoopy or Garfield or whatever the kids are into these days, and the first sparks of romantic attraction will ignite in their hearts. Even the status of having no valentine can be a holiday--a chance to go out with other, unattached hearts and celebrate one's freedom from the obstacle course of love. (Sometimes these are more fun anyway!)

I think it's fantastic that there is a day devoted to the expression of romantic love. Yes, this day is not without its pitfalls. I can remember the first Valentine's Day I celebrated with my now-husband. It was two weeks after our first date. Oh, the consternation! Do I get him something? Do I even acknowledge the day? Will he? What if he doesn't? The sweet agony of a newborn relationship. Makes me kind of miss those pins-and-needles days.

Whatever the day brings, I'm going to try to be my own valentine this year. I'm going to be sweet to myself in some small way. Make time for practice. Take myself out for Starbucks. Spend a few minutes just breathing in the cold, crisp February air. All day today, I plan to stop and appreciate this moment, today, now. It's too easy to get caught up in the daily grind, the endless cycle of chores and obligations. It's so easy to focus on what we want over what we have, what's not working versus what is. Sure, I'm as big as a house and spend most hours in some form of relative discomfort and crankiness. But still. I can breathe. I can move. I can take in the world around me and appreciate the little pleasures the day has to offer. I can even seek them out, and take a relatively routine Tuesday and elevate it to something really special. That is, if I can stop complaining for five minutes to really take a deep breath and see this moment for what it is. An opportunity for transformation.

And while I'm at it, I'll probably stuff my face with some Valentine's Day chocolate. To enhance the experience, of course.

Happy Valentine's Day!

coming clean

I've been ignoring you, my little blog. I admit it. The last few weeks of pregnancy have been rough. For me, there are few things more painful then waiting for a new phase of your life to begin. I remember feeling this way in the endless stretch between medical school and internship. For several months I languished in that undefinable, formless limbo as I waited for the day to arrive when my life would radically change. I had heaps of anxiety about it and wanted nothing more than to just get started and get on with it, but I could not artificially push the date forward no matter how hard I tried. Same with waiting for Siobhan to arrive, although in that case I was too excited and happy and, to put it bluntly, ignorant, to know what was coming down the pike. This time I know all too well what having a newborn baby means. What I don't know is how in God's name I'm going to do it and still give my sweet 14 month old baby girl all the love and mama time she needs.

Add another wrinkle to the plan: I just found out I'm having a c-section. This was always a possibility, since I had a fairly serious shoulder dystocia with my girl and she was only a modest 7 and 1/2 pounds. This little man is estimated to be at least a pound larger than she was. Thanks to the genetic quirk of being built somewhat like an adolescent boy in the hips department, I probably would be more suited to birthing lemurs rather than human beings. I didn't help myself by making babies with a six-foot-two man, either. So these are my choices: roll the dice and risk another harrowing vaginal delivery, or take the safe bet with the longer, more painful recovery. Guess I'll just have to suck it up.

So how does that lead me to my neglect of this blog? Well, I just didn't feel like writing, I suppose. Felt like I had nothing to say. Sort of a period of intellectual and creative pouting, as it were. Now for the five people who do read this, I'm sure you don't care all that much. You all have lives more exciting than mine which I presume you are living with joy and gusto. But this blog is good for me, helps me get the cobwebs out, and so I'm the one that's been suffering. My apologies to myself. The waiting is painful but not intolerable. There are plenty of juicy moments to savor. And plenty of ones that will be really funny in the future. Like this morning, when Steve and I were trying to assemble the new play yard and after an hour of laboring over this piece of crap (promised to assemble in under a minute), we lost all composure and had a Clark Griswold in the Santa suit meltdown. The play yard is now snapped in several pieces and sitting in our driveway. I'm pretty sure our daughter will have to be in therapy now. But hey. At least we went to Crazytown together, and we're already laughing.

It will make a good story to tell her during family week at rehab.