Allow me to take a moment and go all cliché on you: Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday. There’s nothing I love more than Jason and an excuse to make out–Valentine’s Day offers both of those things and so much more.
And Boo to the nay sayers who claim that Valentine’s Day is not a big deal, that they can get flowers any day of the year. I believe in officially celebrating romantic love. I go in for the chocolate and the balloons and the sappy love letters Hallmark puts out and pink and red sprinkles on everything…love is one holiday worth making a big sugary deal over.
I hated being single on Valentine’s Day and I cherish my lover every year because of it.
Jason and I trade off in no particular fashion when it comes to Valentine’s Day. Historically speaking, February 14th always involves a surprise. Sometime’s it’s a mini-vacation, sometime’s it involves wigs and sneaky slutty behavior, and sometimes, when I’m really really lucky, it includes concert tickets.
This was a concert ticket year.
Not just any concert, The Concert. The one at the top of my please-let-me-see-him-live-before-he-dies-like-Michael-Jackson concert. This year for Valentine’s Day Jason took me to see…drum roll…
Engelbert Humperdink. Running nose to nose with Neil Diamond, one of my favorite singers from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, I am a third generation Englebert fan.
He’s almost 80 years old and can you believe he’s still touring? I was a little worried about going, you know how old people sometimes don’t know when to quit (I intend to be a no-quitting old person) and keep on trucking when really they’re more like an aged train wreck?
That is not Englebert.
Sure, his voice has lost it’s youth and a portion of it’s luster, but the man can still put on a fabulous show. And there’s something impressive about watching an almost 80-year-old cha cha across the stage to Quando Quando Quando.
When you’re as old as Engelbert you rely on the audience to do a lot of the singing for you, taking chorus breaks to catch your breath while the entire hall belts out, “I had the laaast waaaltz with yoooooou…” Jason loves him as much as I do and wasn’t afraid to sing with all the tone-deaf old people around us. You know you’re with an older generation when you can count on one hand how many cell phones you see turned on during the concert (we were up on the third level).
I confess, I might have cried through his entire performance of “After the Lovin’,” then once again when he sang my very favorite, “This Moment in Time.” I could almost feel my Grandma there with me a few times, it was really cool. She would have absolutely loved every second of it.
Jason my love, if you ever read my blog and see this post, thank you. I think you’re a rock star. Every night that I come home from work to find laundry folded and dishes done or the kitchen floor mopped, or homemade cookies cooling on the counter and leftovers waiting for me in the fridge, I have to shake my head in disbelief. You probably should have been the wife.
Darling, I leave you with these words immortalized by EH.
“This moment in time, this right time of day. Oh, I love being with you and watching my life at play…And no matter what comes, I know the sun is gonna shine…
Because of you, and me, there’ll be this moment in time.”