Looking Through the Valentine’s Lens

This afternoon Carter went to take Shay-Shay out for a walk and announced that there were flowers on the front porch.  Not just flowers, but two beautiful orchids, my favorite.  It was a wonderful treat that was not surprising on this Valentines Day.  Russ is in Chicago and won’t be home until tomorrow, but I knew he would still make the day special even if he were not here.  It is not just because he is an exemplary husband who I love more than chocolate and peanut butter, but also because he has a long-standing Valentine’s phobia.

Twenty-two years at our first Valentine’s Day, before we were married, Russ really felt the pressure to live up to all the manufactured hype about declaring his love on this day.  Diamond earrings were the gift he thought he should give me, probably from watching too many Kay Jewelers ads.  So for the days leading up to February 14 he searched every mall in South Jersey looking for what he considered to be diamonds worthy of his love and my ears only to discover that diamonds were really, really expensive.

He continued the quest until the day before when he finally realized that the prices on diamonds just don’t vary that much and had to find a plan “B” at the last minute.  For Christmas that year Russ had given me a very nice camera.  Since I was fourteen I had been into photography, even concentrating on it as an art major in college.  Russ did not know that camera brand loyalty was akin to speaking a foreign language.  Just because you can speak French when your native tongue is English does not mean you can understand Spanish.

I was a Cannon girl and Russ gave me an Olympus.  It was a foreign operating system to me and one where I had a lot less creative control.  I pretended I liked it, but secretly I still used my trusty Cannon.  One excuse I used with Russ was that all my lenses were Cannon and they did not fit the new Olympus.  So what brilliant gift did Russ come up with for our first Valentine’s Day together…  a lens for my hated Olympus.

Poor Russ.  I tried to act excited, but my reaction clearly showed that he was now compounding a wrong gift with an unromantic gift.  I tried to make him see that it is not the value of the gift, just the sentiment that counts.  I don’t need any gift on Valentine’s Day.  I love my husband and I know he loves me too.  The last thing I want him to do is stress about a gift.  His learning the “lens mistake” so early in our relationship has saved him hurt feelings and thousands of dollars in wrong gift choices.  A sweet note, or an orchid that will live until the next year make me happiest.

So the words on the card from the florist today, “I hope you like this more than a lens” are the similar to the words he says every year.  But it’s not the flowers or a gift that I like.  It’s my husband whom I love everyday.  He makes every day Valentines Day for me.