Why I Now Celebrate Valentine's Day

It’s Valentine’s Day; a day when most of us will buy flowers and chocolates, small gifts and cards to express our love for someone. Like most special days, it has become very commercial with florists who look at today with the same drooling fondness that retailers look at Black Friday, only without the price discounts.

For me, Valentine’s Day has never held much meaning except for a period when my daughter was very young and I would buy her a large heart-shaped box of chocolates. She actually liked the box more than the chocolates which made it all the more special back then. After she grew older and had young men in her life who bought her flowers and small gifts, a Valentine’s Day gift from dad lost its appeal and the day lost its significance for me, until I met Maggie.

I didn’t choose the name Maggie’s Bear lightly. Almost from the day she met me, Maggie has called me Bear and she is the only one who ever has. She has always been Margaret until she met me and I started calling her Maggie  (a name I used to dislike) almost immediately.

Our first date was for breakfast at a very popular and cool diner that I like. We were to meet there at 10:00 on a Sunday morning but Maggie was delayed by the fact that I gave her the wrong address. Fortunately, she persevered and found both the restaurant and me and I knew from her smile when she walked in that I would be with her for the rest of my life.... or die trying.

We have been together ever since.

The simple fact is that I love Maggie. I love her for her compassion, her humour, her humanity and her warmth. She is a very special lady, a strange combination of a highly successful professional and a silly young girl. She is pretty in her own right and not only because I think so. She has a smile that can melt ice and a gentleness in her voice that can bring even a bear to heal. 

I love Maggie for those reasons but also because she has strength and I know she will not falter when the storm rages around us.

I love Maggie because she is sexy, feminine, funny, caring and as my mother used to say, cute as a button.

Mostly, I love Maggie because she fits. She isn’t perfect but she fits perfectly in me.  I would rather spend the worst day of my life with her than the best day of my life with anyone else.

She is my wife, my friend and my lover.

When we’re young, most of us have an idea in our thoughts about what the person will be like that we will fall in love with and with whom we will spend our life.  I wrote once that while I didn’t know her name or what she would look like, I would recognize her by her smile and by the fact that her hand fit perfectly in mine

I was right.

When I finally found her, I recognized her immediately by her smile and discovered after the first hour of the first day, her hand did fit perfectly in mine.

Her name is Maggie and she is the reason why I now celebrate Valentine’s Day.  For me, Valentine's Day is a celebration of her.

Gelukkig Valentine de dag, Maggie. Ik hou van jou - Bear

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