This Valentine’s Day, Now That We Are Parents…

Does Valentine’s Day change in fundamental ways, whether in the first flush of love, through the days and years of courtship, as newlyweds, or after becoming parents?

You and I, at the age of sixteen, oh so sweet.

It was love at first sight, when your blood ran down to your feet.

Red roses and teddy bears, the squishy soft toys kept flowing in.

Valentine’s Day was celebrated all through the ten years of courtship that came rolling in.

Then came the game changer, giving us a reality check.

Marriage, they had warned us, of the ship wreck!

We laughed and told them, we are different.

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We were so sure, we were right, cent percent.

While the ship is still sailing,

I can hear my heart wailing.

Just like they said,

There ain’t no roses in my bed!

Those years of courtship, when you blew bubbles through the bubble stick.

Just to watch me chuckle and laugh, when I would lie sick.

I laugh now still, as the bubbles are sailing along.

I laugh now still, as I watch them while doing the dishes and humming a song.

The bubbles laugh back, while I give our baby a bath.

They gurgle in the kitchen sink, like a sign of wrath.

Those candle light dinners, when I daintily dined with you.

Now with a baby in one hand, I shove a morsel down with the other, thinking is this true!

I would never miss a mirror coming my way on the street,

I would check myself out and worry about the single crease that didn’t look neat.

Now I barely comb my hair,

Even glancing at the mirror is rare.

That one hour of dancing in the shower,

It’s now a five minute hot bath, giving me all the power.

There ain’t no dreams, because I barely sleep.

Co-sleeping with an octopus, hanging at the edge of the bed, I count my sheep.

Those sunflowers, lillies and those dandelions.

They’re now all tomatoes, potatoes and onions.

Love comes in all forms and stages of life,

It doesn’t have to be a bed of roses, so you could accept that you’ve sometimes called me a knife and not a wife.

There was love in those dates,

There was love when we were teens entering the college gate.

There was love when we got our first job.

Even when after marriage I grumbled, when you broke the door knob.

They also told me, age is just a number.

Love never dies, so I am still as cool as a cucumber!

Since you were and will always be my king,

I think of the unselfish love and the Gift of the Magi, and no more precious rings.

Since the ways of loving keeps changing with time,

So this Valentine’s Day, just do the dishes, because I am still yours and you are mine!

Image source: shutterstock

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