S.W.A.K. Carnival

Saturday is Valentine’s Day – for those of you who live like ostriches with your heads in the sand.  We will be celebrating that day by driving from the northernmost part of the country to the southernmost part (well, almost).  In a Malibu (i.e. not very large car).  With two children.  Can’t you just feel all that romantic ambience.  No?  Me, neither.

My husband and I don’t do Valentine’s Day very well.  We never have.  That’s not to say that we don’t love and like each other or that we don’t get romantic with the best of them.  We just don’t do the romance thing on February 14.  Right now, we live in an area of the country where we want to hide under a rock through most of the month of February.  February may only have 28 days, but it sure feels like it has about 100.  It’s cold, but the snow isn’t nice and fresh.  And there’s not much sun.

But, not celebrating Valentine’s Day very often (as I mentioned above) does NOT mean that we don’t do romance.  My dear hubby is, in fact, quite a romantic guy.  Let me tell you the story of our getting together and you can judge on the level of romance.

We met in Laville Cafeteria at LSU in the Spring of 1987.  When I first met him, he had a beard and mustache (left over from Dead Week from the previous fall semester).  I thought he looked like all those stereotypical pictures of Arab terrorists, although not as angry and without some kind of head covering – and it just wasn’t a good look for him.  When I next saw him, he had shaved off the beard, but not the mustache and looked much better.  So, our first date was to see the movie “The Secret of My Success” with Michael J. Fox and have dinner at Bennigans in Baton Rouge.  We dated through that semester.  During the summer, he stayed at LSU for summer school and I went home to Florida.  Being the dark ages before complete connectivity, we wrote letters (yes, using pen and ink) back and forth to each other.  We did talk on the phone some.

Here’s the part of the story that’s not so happy.  We planned to meet in North Florida with his mom and then go back to LSU together.  During the summer, I had gotten into my head that I no longer wanted a boyfriend because I needed to get serious about my studies.  Of course, I still had a really high GPA, so I’m now not sure what I was thinking.  Let’s just call it a lapse in judgment.  So, on the beach in Pensacola, I broke up with him.  Of course, we then had to ride back to Baton Rouge together.  Of course, I told him we could still be friends.  Doesn’t everyone do that.

I still saw him at times at school.  Once, I even asked him to go up to my aunt’s house for a visit one weekend.  Yes, it’s a little weird, but I was conflicted.  I did have a boyfriend for five months, but I finally broke up with him when I couldn’t handle anymore that he was jealous that I was smarter than him.  And I didn’t tell him we could still be friends.  During Mr. Math Tutor’s last month or so of his last semester in college, we went out a few times, but they were clearly not “dates”.  How do I know?  Well, I said so.  I said they weren’t dates, so they weren’t.

Then, Mr. Math Tutor moved off to Colorado Springs.  I finished my last semester at LSU then started medical school at Tulane.  During the first semester at med school, Mr. Math Tutor and I talked on the phone a lot.  A little strange to keep calling someone I wasn’t dating, huh?  That summer, I visited Mr. Math Tutor in Colorado Springs.  He met me at the airport with a single red rose.  HOW SWEET!!  We got to his house, and I finally managed to tell him vaguely coherently that I had fallen in love with him.  EEK!  How would he respond?  Would he say he loved me?  Did he love me?  What about his job?  What about med school?

Things went beautifully from there.  We had a very nice week together (if you discount my episode of altitude sickness from going up Pike’s Peak).  He quit his job and moved to Baton Rouge a couple of months later and eventually found work in New Orleans.  He proposed to me in November of 1996 and we got married in June 1992.

Does it get any better than this??  He moved halfway across the country to be with me.  He started over in a new job after the move.  When we moved for my residency, he became a stay at home dad.  He always puts me and the kids first.  No, it doesn’t get any better than this.

And, here are some of the other romantic things he does:

• He cleans the cat boxes.
• He leaves flowers from the garden on my pillow in the morning.
• He buys me chocolate.
• He emails me love-notes from his Blackberry.
• He watches Chick-Flicks with me.
• He goes to the library, pharmacy, and grocery store for me.
• He puts gas in the car for me.

Happy Valentine’s Day, my dear.  I’m sure we’ll find some time for a kiss in the midst of the travelling.  Not while you’re driving, though.

The rest of you readers should check out the S.W.A.K Carnival for more great love stories