Valentine’s Day is different every year. Sometimes it’s feeling really sad but at the same time really good about how very much alone you are, and taking your laptop on a date to a weird diner and eating all of said diner’s pasta and writing things no one will ever see. For me, two years ago, it was a terrible breakup immediately followed by a perfectly timed bronchial infection.   So then LAST year,  because the year before was so gnarly, I flew AWAY FROM THE DAY, went to Costa Rica, spent the evening at airport bar where an old man sitting with his wife  sent me a glass of wine and said if I were twenty years younger! and his wife said He’s right! He means it, he really means it, and I’m sitting right here! ‘ But this year it just so happens that I have a pretty wonderful man in my  life (a sentence I’m not sure I’ve ever thought / embraced…. Am I finally old enough to start calling boys men?)

A master of surprise, he snuck into my apartment, and left flowers there,

Packed me a bag full of adventure items, then kidnapped me and took me  to Paradise, which today was  a hike down in the greenest Malibu you ever did see, down to where they used to film Mash.

The best part: I didn’t have to think about a single. Thing. That’s the real gift, when someone knows you well enough that all you are doing is constantly worrying and thinking about things, and removes that worry, so you can just — be. And eat all of the Swedish Fish that he bought knowing, also, that also, you will probably be needing some of those.