Ian and I never particularly did Valentines day.  Although I *like* getting the gifts and stuff, I never felt it a necessity.  It’s a more than a bit over-commercialised to me, which is thankfully quite a protective view-point in my after.

But the day still holds memories. Some good. Some that trigger a sense of guilt.

John was born in the late evening on a Friday.  On the Monday, Ian came into my hospital room with a flower arrangement.  ‘Oh sweetheart, thanks for the Valentine’s flowers’ I say.

Dejected look on his face.    ‘Oh.  They were for having John’.

The poor dear.  He didn’t get to the shops over the weekend.  He hadn’t noticed all the Valentine’s paraphernalia in the florists at all.  Hadn’t even realised the date.  Didn’t make the connection when he couldn’t get roses, so just like when he proposed, resorted to succulents (I grow a lot of them now… they’re about the only thing that actually survives my lack of memory to water).   

No matter what they were for, they were lovely.

The next year,  we’d agreed not to bother with Valentine’s at all.  But on a whim, I bought a card for him because the text made me laugh in the store, and it was the first Valentine’s since we married.  Plus I’d been a right royal cranky pants and it was a way of apologising.

I’ve been going through some more boxes and stumbled across it again yesterday.

The Front:

 

 

 

Dear Husband, I knew the moment I saw you, I knew we’d fall desperately in love, get married, have kids…

 

Inside, it reads: 

 

And drive each other crazy for the rest of our lives.

Little did I know, that for Ian, that would only be another four months.

I knew in the back of my mind I’d kept it, but had forgotten it’s existence.  On finding it, once again I feel guilty, like it was a prophesy or something.  It doesn’t matter that it was highly appropriate to our relationship, it still triggers that negative feeling.

The same as when I first packed it away.