St Valentine’s Day.

If there’s any day of the year to be suspicious, this literally should be the day. With the exception of days like Friday the 13th or April fools, maybe even the Ides of March, no other day of the year carries such a heavy burden.

The burden of love and romance.

This is a day people dread, both as a single person or as part of a couplet.

Men generally dread it far more as half of a significant other, or so I understand,

aware that their performance on this day can haunt them until the following year.

Women often dread it as a singleton, the weight of other people’s expectations or comments an irritating reminder of society’s failings.

I have spent many years as a single woman, far more than I’ve spent in the couple format, and I fondly remember anti-valentines bowling parties,

Holly driving the wrong way down a one-way street in Winnipeg,

Glow bowling with beers and pizza.

Drinks at a pub with Rachel and her vodka-with-a-spoon.

For many years, my friends helped me enjoy V-Day in truly memorable ways, and now my husband has taken up the gauntlet.

I’m sitting on a small break from our impromptu date, stomach full of amazing Italian food from our local resto,

smiling.

I truly expected nothing today.

Our 8th valentines together, recently suffering through virus after virus, children vomiting, coughing, home from school and miserable.

So far, 2018 has been a blur of illness, so the shock of a date today, the day of all expectations and societal pressure, was something I wasn’t expecting at all.

That made it all the sweeter.

We may not be starcrossed lovers married under stealth by a priest, or movie stars that can jet off to Rome,

But a little Italian restaurant a mile from my house is a little slice of romance that I can get behind.

Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone out there, whatever you’re choosing to do this year.