Just Another Day - Valentine's!

14 February 2025

Should I have known?

I slept well but got chilled in the ‘wee’ hours — called ‘wee’ for a reason. It’s 62 degrees up here! I like it cold, but 62 is too cold. I turned it up to 68. Better. I wore my cashmere sleep sweater to bed but took it off before falling asleep; it was too hot! Now it’s too cold! Will my body temp ever self-regulate again? I search in the pre-dawn dimness for my sweater, find it, and put it on. I needed it, or another cover, desperately... I needed a cap, too, but I was already back in bed and was too cold/ slash/lazy to get up again. I scold myself, saying the same thing I’ve said to them enough times when they go without eating: ’Doing without because of laziness is not a good habit to fall into.’ I warm up in a few minutes and fall back to sleep. I love cashmere.

09.05 am

Should I? Have known?

It’s Valentine's Day - an inflated opportunity for the heart to float. Inflated with hope. I was an idealist once — now I’m a pragmatist who still believes in dreams. I do not expect anything different to occur on this, a.n.other Hallmark holiday, but it might. Then I spot a blue plastic water bottle in the ‘garbage’ side of the double bins, and my heart sinks. It sinks regularly, sadly, although today, for a reason, I resist. I hang, a bit desperately, for a moment longer, onto how lifted my heart was! Just! Propelled by the greenness of the morning light! but! in the no-time-at-all it took for me to glide down the stairs, slide into the kitchen, make a cup of tea, slice and juice a lemon — grateful for the allure of its lemony yellowness — and pull open the cupboard that stores the bins, it sunk.

Fixated on the bottle’s blueness and persistent plastic-ness, I despair at the discrepancy—a crying shame. But! I put a cork in those willing, wilful tears. Not today. It’s Valentine's Day.
Mild outrage was my first emotion beyond the lovely waking ones. So? At the risk of seeming overdramatic or oversensitive, I prefer not to start my day with outrage, even the mild kind. It’s not healthy.

The word for the transitional state between sleep and wakefulness is hypnopompia. There was so much going on in my dreams last night, yet I was content not to write them down this morning. I'm not sure why; I am usually compelled to, but I'm following my gut not to, so no notes from my dream world, but one from that moment of waking with a bright, green light flooding my space as I opened my eyes—so vivid so green! Like grass, especially after it rains. It made me feel happy, so alive and well. This morning’s hypnopompic landscape was wonderfully, completely, vividly green, like the green of the recycling symbol.

The recycling bin is right behind the waste bin — they pull out together — yet nine times out of 10 (and that’s being generous), what ought to be recycling lands in the garbage. I typically start my day fishing their recycling out of the trash. I try to do so with grace, more often than not with a reminder, sometimes a lesson, but (and it's a big but) when my temper flares because they have done it again, my anger goes to, ‘they are an adult, not a child. Plus, I have discussed this with them over and over and over again. And each time I point out, as patiently and even-tempered as possible, how this process works, they will respond as if hearing it for the first time. ‘Oh!’ they will say, ‘you learn something new every day.’

Last night, they confessed that the Valentine's Day cards they bought for me had ‘disappeared.’ There’s a word for this kind of interpretation of events. There is a word for everything. But the word is not always to hand. I'm curious why when I searched for the word, this, from Pride and Prejudice: Chapter 34 popped up when I googled:‘These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.’

I accepted its randomness and gave it no more weight than necessary. However, having read this phrase from Jane Austen’s novel again, I can see some relevance...Oh, the term I was looking for is unaccountable.

I should have known.

Should I have taken that incident — the fire in the pizza box — as a sign? It was shocking to return from work to a fire on the weekend we’d first met. Another person might very well have taken it as a sign, a warning, a premonition, a — what’sthat word from the bagel poem that I never fully understood? Perhaps I will understand it better it now, when I remember it. It may be the perfect word. It may not, but if it is, I will surely have fully grasped its meaning.

Not enigma. An enigma it was, oh yes, it was! But it's not the word I was grasping for, and it’s not from the poem about the bagel. Enigma is another word that took its time to assimilate into my word bank. I first heard it many years ago in a song from the musical, ‘You're a Good Man Charlie Brown.’ In true Peanuts fashion, The Glee Club Rehearsal is childlike and sophisticated. Schroeder is trying to lead the group in singing, Home on the Range, but petty squabbles present constant interruptions. It goes something like this:

Oh, give me a home
Where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play (Gimme my pencil)
Where seldom is heard

(You’re an enigma)
A discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
(If you don’t give me that pencil, I’m going to SCREAM)
[the word SCREAM is sung in synch with the first word of the Chorus]: HOME, home on the range...
(What’s an enigma?)

I, too, wondered, ‘What’s an enigma?’ until I got it, and loved the word since. This current word search is from the poem about bagels, called The Bagel, by David Ignatow. I’ve struggled more with this one than with enigma; I still am, and I sense this may be a breakthrough moment for me and that word.

I stopped to pick up the bagel rolling away in the wind annoyed with myself
for having dropped it

as if it were a portent.

Portent! Yes! A portent is a sign. Should I have taken that fire on our first date as a portent? Hoorah! I have now used the word portent successfully in a sentence. I have grasped its meaning.

I should have.

But we don’t, do we? Or, at least, I didn’t. I was truly shocked to come back to that cute little cottage to smell the smoke from the outside as I approached, to find the person I‘d just met in the smoke-filled kitchen, laughing, and saying ‘Hi...... I brought back dinner....’ And to watch in horror as they pulled the pizza from the oven... still in its BOX! charred and smoking. I was in total shock and horror as I waded through the smoke, shouting, ‘Are you crazy! the fire is still alive!’ And, with as much first-responder will as I could muster, put out the flames while they stood by — almost childlike, unaware of the potential danger! Almost completely unfazed, untouched, while I wondered, what if I had come back any later? It doesn’t bear thinking about now. I came back when I did, I put out the fire, and I, uhm, passed on the blackened pizza.

Was that fire a portent? Should I have run away and put this experience down as another footnote in the annals of the dating game? I did not. We don’t. We think it’s a one-off. Besides, they are cute, charming, funny. They have a lot of money; they are generous. And, they are needy. They need me to show them every day where the recycling goes, they need me to remind them to eat, they need me to suggest they tidy up their room, do their laundry, stand up straight, do their exercises, focus on one thing at a time, finish what they’ve started, take shorter naps in the afternoon so they can sleep better at night...

Love has so many layers;
I love with all my heart;
I don't love in physical, intimate expression anymore;

I love in the day-to-day shared experience;

And today is just another day.