It is already Saint Valentine’s Day and Fat Tuesday waits just around the bend. Winter is loosening its grip, even if it refuses to admit it. The light lingers a little longer. The cold still bites, but it doesn’t own the day the way it did in January. We are in that in-between season, not quite thawed, not quite frozen.
And here comes Shakespeare.
“Speak low, if you speak love,” from Much Ado About Nothing. Fitting, isn’t it? Because that play isn’t about starry-eyed romance. It is about guarded people with sharp tongues and wounded pride. Benedick and Beatrice don’t trust love. They mock it. They circle it like two fighters who have been hit before. And yet, somehow, they walk toward it anyway.
Here is the truth: I’m not against love. I’m against illusion.
I am weary of the version of romance that gets packaged and sold like it is a guarantee. Life taught me better than that. Love isn’t violins and restaurant reservations.
It is complicated.
It is sacrifice.
It is disappointment.
It is timing that doesn’t line up. It is people doing their best and still coming up short.
But I do love.
I love my family and my friends. The surprise phone calls and shared meals and showing up. I love my work and the career I have had. Decades of mornings, markets, mistakes, wins, and lessons. I love where I live. The streets I know by heart, the seasons that mark time whether I ask them to or not.
I love sitting at the counter in a good diner. Coffee poured without asking. Strong and black like George McGinnis. I love the radio humming in the kitchen before the sun is fully up.
Maybe I don’t believe in fireworks anymore, but I believe in loyalty. I believe in routine. I believe in praying. I believe in the kind of affection that grows roots instead of wings.
Winter makes a man reflective. Saint Valentine’s Day can make him defensive. Maybe the point isn’t to shout love from rooftops. Maybe it’s to speak it low. To recognize it in the ordinary. To honor it in the steady things that haven’t left.
Spring will come the way it always does...
...not dramatically, but gradually.
...And maybe love does the same.
