Seasons of Love

I know many people count winter as their least favorite season but I truly love it.  I love the coziness of incessant snow, I love the relative hush that falls over the street and the crisp air that sets your lungs afire.  That feeling of being cloistered away for a time is a luxury that many don't count among the riches of the season.  Call me sentimental for something that isn't very practical, but I see the earth buried beneath this temporary mantle and I know that life will begin again soon, very soon, and we should all be patient and enjoy the anticipation of spring.  Or maybe that's just my lapsed Catholicism rationalizing Lent...either way, you've gotta hand it to a religion that appropriates nature's cycle.  Maybe it is the poetry of deepest winter, those dark-skied mornings and early twilights that make us hold our loved ones a little closer, spend a little more time talking and just being together, that I hold dear.    

Of all the winter months, I love February the most.  January even holds special meaning for me now (frosties!) but February is that special time when we get to celebrate unabashed displays of looooooove.  I freely admit that I used to have a teenager's loathe it/secretly like it relationship with Valentine's Day.  I have always been a reluctant romantic so I can really get behind the red and pink splendor of pouring out your guts in the form of verbal sentiments and edible delights.  Who doesn't love chocolate?  Come on!  February is chocolate's time to shine.  The furtive nature of sending and receiving valentine's has a rather gothic quality to it.  I don't know, something about the slow burn of a flame you never knew existed is appealing.  The season is rife with possibility. 

But there's so much more to love than the romantic sort.  There's philia, or friendship, storge, affection, eros, of course, but then agape which, though deeply Christian in its associations today, comes from ancient Greece and is the most powerful of all: unconditional love.  I felt stirrings of this when I said yes to the love of my life and there were murmurs when we brought Oscar home but I have never truly known agape before becoming a mother.  Of course, I've been the recipient of apage and I love my parents truly and deeply but it isn't the same until you, yourself, transform from someone's child into someone's parent.

This Valentine's Day, I celebrated the greatest gift the world has ever known -- and yes, I had my champagne and Dove Promises, too.

My funny Valentine