Valentine’s Day. The ultimate Hallmark holiday. Arguably the dumbest reason ever to have to buy a card, bouquet of flowers, jewelry, balloons, chocolates, an overpriced dinner, or expensive lingerie. Why do you need a holiday to say you love someone?

I’ve been married for 11 years now and while the romance isn’t gone, it’s just… different. Familiar. Like my coffee. He knows I love to drink coffee all morning, so he grabs my mug to refill it when he gets up. He knows I don’t like a big song and dance over anything but like all men, it took awhile to learn. After a few years of trying to outdo himself with dinners, flowers, jewelry and such nonsense; he realized I value the everyday stuff the most. The little things really do count the biggest in my heart.

I truly do think flowers are a waste; they wither and die, I’d rather have a potted plant or a new shrub for the garden that will live and grow. I don’t even plant annuals, it’s perennials only for this gal! For Valentine’s Day and most other “occasions”, I would rather stay home, get takeout or make something myself, and rent a movie. That way, I don’t have to pay for and drive a babysitter home, pay for overpriced food, tip for crappy service, deal with self-absorbed people and I can drink the whole bottle of wine and pass out on his lap at the end of the movie. They tend to frown on that sort of behavior in the theater. Prudes.

I like familiar. It’s comfortable. Not in a boring way, but a reassuring calm I know I can trust. I don’t need any special gesture on February 14th to tell me he still loves me, do you know why?

He gets me coffee. Every. Single. Morning.

He even goes out of his way to search out cool coffee mugs for me and they always fit my hand, match my style and shows me he knows who I am. He always cooks up a whole package of low sodium, extra crispy bacon on the mornings I do sleep in, which is not very often, but it’s an amazing smell and food to wake up to! He jumps to get me water when I’m busy writing and knows I don’t like ice cubes in my glass during winter. He folds the clean towels and puts them away because he knows I hate laundry. He pulls the car around to let me out closest to the door.

Maybe those things aren’t much to other women, but they are everything to me. It’s the little things that hold the most weight in my heart.

I’ll be the first to admit: I’m a pill. I’m tough, set in my ways, and hard to love. I am also the sort of woman who doesn’t need anyone. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, I was a single mother of an extremely rambunctious ADHD boy for five years before I met my husband, and that no-nonsense tough gal attitude certainly came in handy. To me, it’s a compliment to him that I don’t need him. He knows I’m not some needy, clingy woman just sticking around for what – the kids, convenience, money, status – who knows.

To me, it holds more weight that I don’t need him here, I want him here. 

So for Valentine’s Day, I will be all too happy to put a pork roast in the crockpot for dinner and he will get up early with the kids and bang around the kitchen to make me breakfast.

Bacon, eggs, french toast, and of course, my coffee.