What a day it has been!

Sue came to my place for a Valentine’s Breakfast of smoked salmon with crème fraîche, scrambled eggs, coffee cake, and Earl Grey. She brought a hand-made card and a gift, and I had a hand-made card and a gift for her. We laughed because the cards we made for each other were almost identical. We enjoyed our tenth Valentine’s Day till she left for her afternoon with Eliana.

Soon after Sue left, two dozen long-stemmed red roses were delivered, a gift from my extravagant daughter Angel, in Houston. The roses were grown in Colombia, jetted to Memphis (despite the carbon footprint), packed and jetted to Portland, and delivered to my apartment by truck just before noon. I’m grateful for Angel’s love and her wild extravagance. I’m not sure where she learned to be wild and extravagant, nor how she could afford it, but it sounds like something I might have modeled, maybe. 

Feeling that one dozen was more than enough, I took half Angel’s roses to Margie, whose eyes and heart devoured them. I asked her to let me arrange them all over her body, and she cooperated with flair. Then I trimmed them for a vase I found in her cupboard and presented them to her all over again (Extra). I asked if she remembered Valentine’s Day in her youth.

She didn’t have any impressions of Valentine’s Day, but she fell into memories of elementary school. She told me she always liked kids her mother didn’t approve of, and she liked math, especially multiplication tables. I asked if she can remember them now, and she recited, rather deliberately, the 3’s, stumbling a bit over 3 x 9, but as pleased with herself as I was for her. After the thrill of the roses and the strain of recalling her multiplication tables, she seemed unusually tired, and I slipped away a little earlier than usual.

Here's a virtual rose of solidarity for all those who are without Valentines today and my own memory of the Worst Valentines Ever: I was single (as I was for most of my life), at a work conference where I knew no one, and forced to eat alone in a restaurant on Valentine's night. You can imagine.

If you like old movies, here’s Gene Kelly singing and dancing to “What a Day It Has Been…Almost Like Being in Love.” Initially Brigadoon was to have been filmed in Scotland, but budget cuts meant it had to be filmed in a studio in Hollywood, though the coos are real.