A Little Love Note for All The Butts Cupid Won’t Hit
It’s that time again!
Wallets and waistlines are recovering from the
overwhelm, overeating and overspending of the holidays. We’ve put away the trees, lights, the Santa costumes, and just as we finish licking candy cane off our fingers…
…”Cupid” shows up, bare-bottomed and batting his eyelashes, trying to seduce another
$18.2 billion dollars out of American pockets* for boatloads of
chocolate and candy in the name of romantic “love.”
Everywhere I turn, radio announcers, billboards and online ads are guilting (mostly) men into purchasing gifts for their ladies: “Remember, Boys… You have to buy her something! Don’t forget, or else…”
I don’t mean to be critical, but
as a mother, daughter, sister, wife, business owner and friend slugging her way through the
real world while keeping up with the cooking, the cleaning, the bills, and the tears that spill from the cheeks of my children…
…the last freakin’ thing I need to boost my mojo is a bunch of GMO roses that don’t even smell good and sugar bombs wrapped in pink plastic that were purchased out of guilt!
What Romance Looks Like In the Real World
This is 2018. I would love to have been born in that pilgrim era when people worked the land, married their partner and stuck my them through hard times. Those tear-jerking stories about the children that were so grateful to get a mandarin orange for Christmas moved me! People appreciated what they had and what they had was meaningful and valuable!
There was no ridiculous purchasing of kitsch every three weeks for a new special occasion. Birthdays and celebrations has spiritual or community-building purposes. I’m sick of these commercial excuses to play on the emotions of already overwhelmed people and milk them for millions of dollars spent on candy–that will make them feel even worse!
Don’t get me wrong, I love celebrating life and love, but not on Hallmark’s terms, and definitely not out of guilt or because some radio announcer tells me that if I don’t I’m a lousy partner! I want life and celebration to spring forth because I feel it when I feel it, and any rock or stick gathered out of love in a forest, or a note scribbled in passion on a napkin is a thousand times better than some Hallmark greeting jingle and GMO roses.
How About a Tin Can?
Given our wild and reconstituted family circumstances, romantic love rarely shows up in the form of a dozen roses with perfectly formed thorns! It is way more likely to show up way as muddy boots, messy hair and dirty fingernails after a day of play outside in the park, or a mile-wide smile on the face of a little boy with autism!
My husband’s latest trend is to pick out weird tin cans he finds on his travels. He spends a lot of time trying to pick out the perfect picture on the tin can–Which colour will I like?Will I get jealous if he gives the girls the purple one (because he knows purple is my favorite colour)? He pours his heart into choosing tin-freakin-cans, but I love it!
Not because I love tin cans, and not because I like what’s in them (they’re usually filled with cookies I don’t eat) but because he thought it was pretty, practical and thought of me when he bought is, so it’s PERFECT!! I love it!! Thank you!
There will be a lot of roses, chocolates and gift cards circulating next week. In case Cupid isn’t planning to shoot a “compulsive shopping arrow” in the fleshy part of someone’s backend on your behalf, I wanted to give you a little love note from my heart to yours this February 8th, the newly appointed “Just Because” Day.
Because I want to. Because you deserve it. Because messy hair and dirty fingernails would be a little weird to give to you.
Love every day!
Tera
p.s.
