February 14, 2017

My dearest,

Thank you for not celebrating Valentine’s Day.

Thank you for agreeing with me that this is but a marketing ploy, launched once every year, to relieve folks of their hard-earned money in exchange for overpriced roses and chocolates that are too sweet and fluffy soft toys that spark a thousand allergies. We are saving for our retirement, we tell ourselves, our constant budget-busting travelling plans notwithstanding.

Thank you also for shrugging and saying “Okay” when I proposed that cooking a romantic meal from scratch is too much trouble after we’ve both had a long day at work and that a quick, affordable meal at our neighbourhood roti canai stall (“It’s even more romantic,” I say, “since it’s beneath the trees. Just ignore the mosquitoes.”) would be swell too. You are so understanding.

Thank you for not needing saccharine love poems or love letters or dramatic proclamations of love or anything embarrassing (more for you than me, I suspect) of the sort all these years. And you actually mean it, amazingly.

Thank you for bearing with me when I do come up with all those saccharine love poems and love letters and dramatic proclamations of love anyway.

Thank you for just being happy to stay at home with your boring old husband, curled on the sofa, reading our books, and not going anywhere or doing anything really, other than being each other’s Valentine every single day of our lives.

Yours, ever and always.