Valentine Part 2

As Valentine's Day approaches, I'm aware of both sides of that heart-shaped coin.

Joni Mitchell's song comes to mind:

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all....

From about second grade on, Valentine's Day can make you feel like part of the Club of Happy Partnered People, or it can make you feel like going to the garden to eat worms!

We've all known both sides--years when we got notes promising Love Forever, flowers, chocolate AND balloons, and years when we avoided even glancing at the card aisle for the whole month of February.

Right after my divorce many years ago, I remember the pang I felt when I saw happy couples walking together.  A friend told me she felt the same.  "When I was first divorced, I wanted to run down every freaking happy couple pushing a shopping cart in the grocery store!"

Recently, Mike and I attended a wedding in which the pastor read this scripture, Ecclesiastes 4:

Two are better than one,
    because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
    one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
    and has no one to help them up.

I bristled a little when he read those words--knowing that many wedding guests were alone there, as I've often been alone at weddings. Not only is there a cultural bias in favor of being part of a couple (think of all the love songs that we all grew up on!) but--as the writer of Ecclesiastes says--those who are alone are to be pitied.

Every person we meet and every experience we have can be a teacher.  While I call this blog "Traveling Solo," the title is a misnomer.  My life (all these "single years") has been anything but lonely and pitiable.

Most single women I know (widowed, divorced, and never married) are very happy.  We've learned to navigate solitude and we've befriended ourselves and each other.  Most of us know that it's possible to be outwardly partnered and inwardly lonelier than we've ever felt single.

But on the other hand, I find myself this year, reading the Valentines cards, buying some,  and mailing them to Georgia!  The reasons we let each other go seven years ago--well, that might be a subject for a later post....

Though I may just skip all that back-story and write about the treasure of finding each other again, just when the time was right.