Nuances

Valentines is over and now that dusts of mass hysteria and communal delusions have settled I'll enumerate a few uncharacteristic insinuations of the L word. Forget the violins, time freezing, and all those mush fabricated by Hollywood. I do not subscribe to the tired, saleable blueprint of romance. If I wanted to hurl I would have stocked on Mills & Boons. Yes, I am a cynic but that doesn’t mean I am immune to the L word’s virulence.

Candle lit dinner, driving towards the sunset and blanket of stars and all the dreamy shebang aside, love arrives in different guises. Here are a few I know of.

• 01. A rain soaked Dad bringing his little monster lunch in school.

• 02. Those bleary-eyed people doing silent vigil in hospital waiting rooms.

• 03. The look racing across the face of your pet dog when he sees you approaching home.

• 04. The often unappreciated person who takes troubles cooking for all single friends who have nowhere to go on Christmas, New Year and Valentines Day.

• 05. The silence when blame is appropriate.

• 06. Telling people they stink minus the judgment.

• 07. Camping beside the muted phone in aching hopefulness for it to ring.

• 08. Enormously missing the schoolyard playmate who often makes you cry.

• 09. A wordless, unexpected touch in the face.

• 10. Discarding your stubbornness not because you are made to, it’s because you want to.

• 11. A name populating your waking hours.

• 12. Effervescent letters written longhand.

• 13. Not standing in anyone’s way of happiness.

• 14. Losing your sense of self (the most unpleasant and deepest manifestation, so help us God.)

• 15. Eating lousy scrambled eggs for breakfast just because she whipped it up. For three years. And you hate scrambled eggs. You want them poached.

• 16. Watching reruns snuggly cramped together in the sofa, wisely avoiding a petty fight, just the flicker of the TV and the numbed patters of Saturday evening rain competing with soft steady breathings.

• 17. Rolling over at three o’clock in the morning and finding someone there breathing next to you and you inch closer and drifting back to sleep, content, smiling.

• 18. Discovering more than three ways to iron a linen skirt and equating detergent to pheromones.

• 19. That light tingle, electricity rocketing across your brain when her light kiss touches your upper lip and your heart soar because no one has ever pulled the lightning rod lever up in you before.

• 20. A bunch of fresh flowers next to a tombstone and it’s not All Souls day.