Valentine's Day On The Clock
When my wife and I were still dating, I would shamelessly cut classes to spend the whole of Valentine's day with her. It was chocolates, a DVD marathon at her place (usually with her mom and baby sister), then dinner and a movie night out. surprising how magical a few hundred pesos (or roughly USD 20.00) can turn an ordinary February day into something special.
But in this modern economy of hearts, the most romantic gesture is often lost amid the red -- not valentine hearts or 99 red balloons, if you know what i mean.
true, my wifey and I are celebrating Valentine's Day together, like we do every year for the last nine years. The whole day spent together at home -- working.
the stars aren't so aligned for this most romantic of days, either. Reading the Sunday news, I learned that Ed Westwick, the excellent actor behind Gossip Girl's anti-hero, Chuck Bass, will be working on Valentine's Day. The lovely Angel Locsin took a raincheck when Phil Younghusband asked if she was free -- begging off because of work.
I remember Valentine's Day in 2005 vividly: We had dinner a Mooon Cafe in Guadalupe, one of our favorite spots. The next day, my then-girlfriend was getting ready to go to work, my wife clutches her stomach in sudden and extreme pain. ten minutes later we find ourselves in the ER of Chong Hua hospital when one resident states my then-girlfriend is experiencing a ruptured appendix and recommends taking it out. an hour later, in deep sedation, they open her up and find a rupture indeed -- a 10-cm endometriotic cyst, and one other the size of a large chicken egg beside it about to burst (no to mention a legion of other cysts in and around her ovary). two hours into the operation, her ob-gyne sits us down to tell us the news.
I guess, as relationships grow, that that's how real love works. At the end of the day, it's not what you do together, whether it's running a DVD marathon and home-cooking, turning $20.00 into the most fantastic date of the year, or staying in the hospital for the next four days.
It's that you do it together, no matter what. And when you're both spending Valentine's Day running after deadlines, romance is in still the air, still in pajamas at 3.21PM.
