Over at Chrysalis it's Marriage Monday, and today's official topic is "How to Celebrate February 14 Every Day of the Year."In good conscience, I wasn't going to participate this month; I don't shower my beloved with the kind of love and affection he deserves all 365 days of the year. I'm willing to be willing, and I try to try, but an awful lot of life gets in the way. I know, I know, excuses are like armpits: everyone has a couple, and they stink. But I digress...!
But Daniel and I did discover something many years ago that other couples may find freeing: We discovered that Valentine's Day doesn't have to be celebrated on Valentine's Day. Birthdays don't have to be celebrated on birthdays. And--gasp!--anniversaries don't even have to be celebrated on the actual anniversary date.
As with pretty much all of the lessons we've learned over the last two decades together, we figured this out the hard way. The expensive way, actually!
On our second anniversary, a Wednesday if I recall, I was three months pregnant with our daughter--not enough to show, but enough to be tired all the time. I was a month into my second year of teaching, which was also exhausting. But we were determined to celebrate our anniversary in style! We weren't about to let our marriage slide into the average category, no way, not us! So we planned not only a dinner out but a trip to Los Angeles to see Phantom of the Opera.
As we staggered into the house around 1:00 AM (sober as church-mice, I assure you!) it occurred to us that the evening had been a lot more work than fun. We'd struggled to stay awake over the salads. We'd fought through rush-hour traffic to make it to the theater. We were so tired and tense, we didn't really enjoy Phantom. And then we had to face the long drive home.
By the time Valentine's Day rolled around, I was so round, I just didn't feel like waiting for hours at a restaurant. "Why not go another day?" one of us suggested. Although it felt odd -- celebrating Valentine's Day on February 15?!? -- it also felt somewhat subversive and deliciously freeing. As we waltzed into our favorite restaurant, wait-free, the next night, we knew we were onto something.
Since then, we've all but given up on celebrating anniversaries, birthdays, and Valentine's Day on the "correct" dates. If we're having a particularly wonderful time together in November, I'll wish Daniel "Happy Birthday!" knowing that on December 29, we're likely to be exhausted from Christmas. And Daniel has learned to whisk me on a weekend get-away during the first week of June so I can recover from end-of-school grading and graduation (in which my May 28th birthday is totally, and thankfully, lost!)
And by the time 2001 rolled around, we were grateful that we'd declared our anniversary celebration to be "the best day of the summer," as September 11 took on an entirely new meaning.
As I've learned to let go of my expectations for what are, when you think about it, arbitrary days on the calendar, I've discovered it's the celebration that matters, not the day. We've learned to celebrate any day of the year.And I'm still working on learning to celebrate every day of the year!