THOSE MAGIC MOMENTS

For those of you have managed to avoid all retail outlets since Christmas, this is your heads-up: Valentine's Day is bearing down on you.  It is tomorrow.  I have to admit that this has never been my favorite holiday.  For some reason this particular day of the year and my love life haven't exactly been in sync.  I can't say never, but it sure seems like, more often than not, we have been at odds.  If I have been in a relationship, it is right at the beginning and still fragile, or at the end and someone is wanting out.  Then there were times that there was fighting going on and no one was feeling particularly romantic.  Let's just say that I simply cannot recall very many Valentine's Days that were the stuff of which dreams are made. 

However, I have this "movie reel" of Jon moments that I sometimes play in my head when I want to smile.  None of them happened on Valentine's Day.  The first day we met when he threw open the door with all of that music roaring in the background and yelled, "What?!?!" at me nearly scaring me to death.  Sitting in the lobby of Kollen talking.  It was the way he looked at me.  That night at the beach which was so romantic. I don't even know how he did it, but he hooked his foot around my ankle, and then we were both horizontal and I was on top of him.  Very sexy.  You don't forget that.  His telling me I was beautiful for the first time at the check-out line at the grocery store.  He did have a way of picking his moments.  This time in New York that he was on the phone with his parents.  He was wearing a red shirt and jeans and the world kind of went into slow motion for me, and I stopped hearing what he was saying.  It was really strange, but I knew that I would remember it forever.  The day we recorded the answering machine message at the lake cottage.  We had to keep doing it because we kept messing up.  The last time the rabbit chimed in at the end, and we laughed and laughed.  We kept that one.  It was perfect.  We played board games at dinner.  He helped me cook dinner.  We laughed a lot.   There was a lot of laughing.

A little over ten years later I got a second shot with Jack.  Equally intense, just a much shorter reel.  Slow dancing.  Ping pong.  There was so much happiness and laughter here.  To this day my heart tugs a little when I see a navy blue shirt that zips at the top.  Actually any shirt that zips at the top.  Lasagna and bass pale ale.  I can't even feel the same about a kerchief tied around someone's head.  He said that living without me would be like living without sunshine.

And those are my non-Valentine's Day reels.  They are all magical for me; they just didn't take place on February 14.  The beauty of the romance reel  is that I can press "play" anytime.  Today I am content with my life just as it is.  I have good friends and a wonderful family, and that is enough.