A Valentine's Day Love Story

Love is making Alison Roman’s Salted Chocolate pudding because it’s your husband’s birthday and Valentine’s Day.

Love is hand mixing the pudding for a total of 19 minutes even though your arm is in a sling.

Love is your adventurous friend inviting you to go ice skating on a lake the day before Valentine’s Day.

Love is your friend telling you that you looked really graceful when you fell (you did not).

Love is pushing yourself to try new hobbies like ice skating at age 31.

Love is your husband encouraging you to go to Urgent Care the next morning when you can’t extend or bend the arm you fell on.

Love is seeing a three-legged dog wearing a cute vest on the way to Urgent Care and joking that it’s you and your husband saying “Oh nooooo, pupper!” when you end up in a sling.

Love is your mom picking you up from Urgent Care and driving you to the grocery store so you can still buy the ingredients to make a special dinner and the pudding.

Love is her pushing the cart and shaking open the produce bags and packing up the groceries to protect your arm.

Love is selecting yellow grocery store roses near the checkout, because yellow roses were your grandpa’s favorite and he was buried on Valentine’s Day in 1994.

Love is your 23-year-old mom zipping you into her coat when you were 3 months old and taking you to her dad’s burial, then raising you to know that yellow roses were your grandpa’s favorite.

Love is your dad planning his weekly schedule around his bread starter so he can deliver a loaf to your apartment in honor of his son-in-law’s birthday.

Love is your dad (who has been keto/carnivore for 10+ years) buying fancy European flours and learning to bake for the first time at age 60.

Love is you and your dad always finding something in common despite differences. Like during Covid when you were vegan and he was carnivore and you both found something you liked on the menu at a small Korean restaurant, so you ordered from them as often as you could to support a local business.

Love is you and your dad eating dinner together on the couch while talking over movies.

Love is having a crush on the stranger you see all the time on the Dublin bus and later connecting with him over your shared restlessness and common taste in food and music and books.

Love is him reading “Travels with Charley” after one of your first dates because you recommended it and then dreaming with you about an American road trip.

Love is the stack of books that migrates between your nightstand and his.

Love is spending Valentine’s weekend together eating leftovers and planning your next road trip, because some of your favorite memories were from 2023 when it was just the two of you on the Alcan highway, listening to music and eating snacks and watching for animals.

Love is buying Alison Roman’s cookbook on that road trip and talking about the recipes you’ll make someday, even though you were living out of your car at the time and a cookbook took up a lot of space.

Love is the space you make in your life.