Married To Your Forever Friend

by Fran McNabb

Valentine’s Day celebrates love. At an early age children learn the holiday’s meaning by exchanging

cute cards with their classmates. Later, valentines are reserved for special classmates and friends. Children learn early that giving and receiving are ways to show love.

As we get older, I think the meaning of Valentine’s Day stays with us, but many couples no longer need the confirmation of love with a gift. Couples who have been together for twenty, thirty, fifty years and more can find their love in other ways.

I’ve been married to the same man for 46 years and I can tell you there have been very few gifts coming my way on Valentines. On our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple I realized the man I’d married wasn’t going to be a man to try to impress me with gifts. We were in the Air Force living in Germany and were walking through the military complex on our way to the liquor store. I stopped in front of the window of a flower shop. He noticed, smiled and said something like, “You want a flower for Valentines?” I smiled big. He then stuck his hand in his pocket, pulled out some money and told me to go in and buy something for myself and he’d go to the other store. What?? Didn’t my new husband understand what Valentine’s meant? Obviously not.

Or maybe he did.
 
That day I went into the flower shop alone, pouting of course, and bought myself a pot plant. A croton. It lived in our small apartment and grew into a beautiful plant. Every time I watered it, I remembered that day on base and had to giggle. When we packed up to come back to the States, I had to leave my croton, but every once in a while, I’ll be reminded of that plant. Like that plant, our love grew during those years in Germany and beyond.

I no longer expect a gift on Valentines, but I did put my foot down one year and told him I expected to get at least a card. Now I do get a card on Valentines and on all other important days, but even without a card I know that love can be shown in many more meaningful ways. Sitting together in the quiet of an evening watching the water or the sunset, holding my hand in public, taking me fishing or dancing when I know he’d rather do something else, watching a romance on TV with me—little things that I cherish as gifts of love.

An expensive piece of jewelry would be nice to get someday, but do I need it? Nope. What I need and what most older couples need is the gift of being together with your Forever Friend and Love.

FRAN MCNABB lives along the Gulf Coast with her husband. Both their sons and grandsons live away so they enjoy quite a lot of time together fishing, boating, and socializing. Fran writes light romance, some of which are set along the Gulf Coast. Visit her at www.FranMcNabb.com or at mcnabbf@bellsouth.net

Good Grief! Today is What???

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

This year the Christmas elves have morphed into malign gremlins, entangling me in strings of tinsel and lights and sending me crashing flat on my face. I try not to post just one essay to both my first Wednesday blogs, preferring to do two different posts on two different subjects, but this time I really have no choice. You see, I forgot. It is now almost half an hour after they should have gone up online, and I am sitting desperately writing in a dark cold office while every other creature in the house is contentedly sleeping, including The Husband.

I do have good excuses/reasons – many of them. Christmas shopping. Out of town family come to visit. Self-indulgently, parties. A couple of meetings that could not be missed. Two hard deadlines breathing fire down my neck – one to finish a book, the other to finish edits. A chronic physical health problem flaring up, as usual at the most inconvenient time. And, perhaps the most annoying of all, this is our seventh week of having no internet at home, meaning that I will be breakfasting at my favorite internet café as soon as it opens in order to get this posted. I really don’t know whether to go ‘sigh’ or ‘grrrr.’ Or both.

As I have said before, do not marry an overly-analytical man. It does get ugly.

So now what shall I say to redeem myself? Nothing, because the forgetting of such a long-standing and treasured responsibility is unacceptable. Hand to heart, I promise to be better.

With any luck at all, all our Christmas shopping will be done this week. Except for my own present, I do all the shopping for the family, but I have been known to have to buy my own occasionally. In both The Husband’s and my families we only give token gifts as we are all blessed with what we really need, but the list is long and it is hard to find even tokens that are not outrageously expensive. As I lurch from store to store, happily shrinking list and traumatized credit card in hand, it is a painful mental gymnastic to think of something appropriate to give each individual. I predict that the gift-card people will be getting most if not all of our business this year.

So, dear reader, the hour is wee, the office is cold, and I am tired. Again, I beg your pardon for such culpable behavior, do promise to be better, and wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas!

(And if you see a couple of elves with sinister expressions carrying ropes of tinsel and lights, please don’t tell them that you’ve seen me!)

Christmas Wishes

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

No, I’m not starting my 2015 Christmas list early. I’m still hung up on this past Christmas season, except that we really don’t have a Christmas season any more.

I can hear you gasping. No Christmas season? The stores fill with merchandise before Halloween, and the commercials earlier than that. Christmas trees bloom in parking lots before Thanksgiving. Christmas parties pile on and overlap each other like shingles. It probably won’t be long before Christmas and Back to School start stepping on each other’s toes.

That’s not what I am talking about. Merchandising campaigns are not a season. Christmas is supposed to be about loving and sharing and a celebration of family. (And yes, the religious celebration which is the reason for the season, but I’m not going to preach sectarianism or even doctrine.)

So what am I talking about? Now we have hysterical shopping, multiple parties, frenzied gift wrapping and, the culminating centerpiece, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is anticipation; children determined to go to bed for once (or stay awake and see Santa) and Christmas Day itself is a tsunami of shredded gift wrap and ritualized overeating. Then it’s over. Nothing looks sadder than a Christmas tree, denuded of packages but with its lights still blazing bravely, on the day after Christmas. Within days the tree and the wreaths and the Santas and the creches disappear, packed away until the following year. When I was a child, many people only took down their Christmas decorations on January 6^th.

But shouldn’t Christmas be more? More than an extended shopping spree, more than a gift-fest, more than even a day of church services?

To me Christmas transcends its religious affiliations and sacred symbolism. It is a time of hope and love and family and peace. We’re losing that to a mountain of merchandizing and parties. Most religions have some sort of midwinter celebration, a time when the year turns and the days begin to lengthen, bringing back light and warmth and survival. The basic idea seems to be one of renewal, of a restart of the life cycle.

In earlier times there was a lengthy Christmas season. It started with the beginning of Advent around the first part of December and went on until Twelfth Night (sometimes called the Night of Three Kings) which by our calendar is January 6^th. When I lived in Mexico, they still kept this schedule. Christmas Day was a time of religious celebration and the exchanging of gifts was done on the 6^th of January, when traditionally the Three Wise Men brought gifts to the Christ Child. Incidentally, some of my Mexican friends are now caught between cultures with their children expecting bounty on both Christmas Day and the Night of Three Kings! The appeal of marketing wins again. 

So what am I dithering about? Basically it is this : Christmas should be a season of joy, of peace, of fellowship and goodwill – things people can and should enjoy whatever their religion. While gifts are important, they and their attendant marketing should not be the sole focus of the season. I would like to see the Christmas season – with its joy and peace and all that – be extended from the beginning of Advent to Twelfth Night. Not more presents, nor more parties, just more good feeling and fellowship. We can only benefit.