A SOLITARY VALENTINICAL LAMENT

Valentine, circa 1938, from the collection of SWMBO’s late Daddy.

This Valentine’s Day is bittersweet, for my Valentine - variously known on these pages as She Who Must Be Obeyed, SWMBO, or The Missus - is away.

The various Fates that determine the school year calendar had set aside this four-day weekend to be a furlough period. The good news? You have a four-day weekend. The bad news? Your paycheck is gonna take a hit. And all this was before the second coming of Snowpocalypse 2014: thanks to the second major winter storm in two weeks, SWMBO had a one-day work week this week.

This gave her time to run off to Foat Wuth to visit her mom, who is celebrating a Major Birthday this year. Good times. But it means that I am apart from my sweetie, and that is, as they say, Tough Nougies.



I love my SWMBO, I really do. We’ve shared our lives now, either as brash young lovers or as a married couple, for some 38 years now... and she is still as beautiful to me as she was on the day we met. No: more so, because with maturity comes intelligence, confidence, and radiance; she is blessed with liberal doses of all three.

She has given me two children, the finest children I could ever desire, children that I would be proud to know even had we no blood relationship. My Other Valentines, if you will.

She’s not afraid to use a little salt in her food... and her language. She will go to the Kitchen Device Emporium with me to shop for colanders, even though she knows the nefarious uses to which I will put them. She makes me laugh... and she can make me cry like a baby.

I know I tend to repeat myself; it’s an affectation of Advanced Age. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: With my love, every day is Valentine’s Day.