Converting a Skeptic

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In the days leading up to Valentine's Day, I had a sense that I wanted to do something nice for Sam, something a bit sentimental, but I wasn't entirely sure how he'd take it.  He doesn't seem the sort.  And when I asked him casually about it, he confirmed that he indeed was not the sort.  "Valentine's Day," said Sam, "is for girls."  He claimed he didn't expect anything, indeed didn't want anything, that girls invented the holiday  so they could have an extra birthday, etc.  And in his defense, he really came through.  He sent me a beautiful bromeliad, which arrived at work with a gorgeously-written card, and then came and visited me and we went for a spontaneous dinner out (we'd planned to be wise and eat at home, since we'd eaten out in a V-day way over the weekend). 

Somewhere in there, I just decided to do it, to do the romantic thing I'd been considering, which was to find a series of short love poems or excerpts from love poems, print them up pretty, and scatter them around the house.  (Some of them (most of them?) are unconvential love poems ...) While he slept on the night of the 14th, I set to work cutting and pasting and deciding where to place the poems: on the microwave? inside his shoes?  under the lid of his laptop?  I had a lovely time placing them, thinking of him, loving him with every swatch of tape. 

And you know? He loved them.  He went around the house the next morning counting them, trying to collect them all, and said he was moved by them, more moved than he expected to be.  And he's saved them, peeled them from their positions and used them to decorate his office.  Sometimes it's good to not worry about how a kind impulse will be received, and just to just do the thing I'm thinking of.  Sometimes it's good to be as mushy as I please. 



Love you, Sam.

Comments

eden said…
that's so sweet.
March 13, 2011 at 6:20 PM
Amara said…
I'm so glad it worked out! Great idea.
March 13, 2011 at 11:28 PM
belann said…
Mother Teresa said, "Never suppress a generous thought." I think that we can never go wrong when we are giving out of love.
March 15, 2011 at 8:50 PM
Emily said…
Well done! And am I the only one who had to google "Bromeliad?"
March 17, 2011 at 10:59 PM
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