A Valentine Nod to What We Love Best

As Valentine’s Day approaches, love is in the air. This year we thought we’d avoid celebrating only red. We admit it, there is so much we don’t love today, or dare we say hate (too strong a word at times). So, for us this Valentine’s Day, we’re compiling a list of our loves, ones that value the ends over the means. 

Unfortunately, love in the English language is an amorphous term. There aren’t really any good synonyms: fondness, tenderness, intimacy are similar but miss the mark, kind of like Cupid and her arrow. We all don’t feel the sting of the arrow.

The Bible describes love as sacrificial, a love that gives and expects nothing in return, according to https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/explore-the-bible/what-is-love-biblical-meaning.html.  Scripture cites four unique forms of love: romantic love, family love, brotherly love and God’s divine love. Our definition is a bit stretched. Our loves fall into one of two camps: love for a person/people and love for inanimate objects, even though we know someone who says that’s more of a strong like rather than love.

Here are our 50 top loves, many of which we share with each other:

1. We love walking on a nice day and even sometimes when nippy if we’re bundled up well.
2. We love our morning cup of coffee with frothed milk or lots of cream.
3. We love our hair being colored to hide the gray.
4. We love a great haircut.
5. We love good cake especially birthday and wedding cake because they are celebratory and have great icing, decorations and sometimes candles that we light and make wishes on.
6. We love the first flowers that poke up their heads in spring, the ones that bloom throughout the summer and the last ones in summer such as cone flowers that say we’re the last in the parade.
7. We love TV series and the ones that make us feel like we know the characters well.
8. We love all television, especially cable, Netflix and Turner Classic Movies.
9. We love crispy French fries with a great rare cheeseburger with tomato and onion. Margaret, who doesn’t eat red meat, loves a rare tuna burger. Make the bun a brioche and we’re in heaven.
10. We love planning trips more than going on them because of crowded airports, planes, air turbulence and some unruly passengers.
11. We love our friendships and the real riches they offer—their personalities, interests, families and our deep connections.
12. We love our children, and especially when they call us to share great news, but we still love them when the news isn’t the best and we can be good listeners. We love that we’ve learned not to rush in with advice.
13. We love warm weather because we’re always cold.
14. One of us loves cleaning and the other loves a cleaned home.
15. We love chocolate, in cookies, cakes and candy.
16. We love cookies, making them and eating almost all of them, except one of us doesn’t like mixing chocolate and peanut butter in some.
17. We love a really good deal; savings are dear to our frugal hearts.
18. We love not having to drive.
19. We love people watching in New York City.
20. We love to read whether a trashy magazine or great book.
21. We love a night off when we can just crawl into bed to read and/or watch TV.
22. We love classical music and prefer in a gorgeous concert hall with a great conductor and appreciative audience.
23. We love a good political discussion or almost any discussion as long as everyone is respectful
24. We love to watch ballet.
25. We love talking to strangers and meeting new people with each of us peppering them with questions.
26. We love good fiction and challenging ourselves to keep the characters straight.
27. We love a beautiful sunset that looks like an impressionist painting, but we also love a good sunrise.
28. We love to laugh, the harder the better.  
29. We love our collaborative endeavor, working with someone who can sympathize with each other’s ups and downs, disappointments and rejoice in their triumphs.
30. We love our extended families, or most of them.
31. We love a good New York hot chewy bagel, though we know Montreal may offer even better ones.
32. We love entertaining and having friends who help and ooh and aah and keep the conversation going.
33. We love good theater and live jazz.
34. We love to be thanked and appreciated for a job well done.
35. We love to receive a letter or card in the mail and will often send notes via snail mail to make them more special.
36. We love a good glass of sparkling wine or a specially crafted cocktail.
37. We love good art and going to museums to see paintings by the old masters and new talent especially when the galleries aren’t crowded.
38. We love to eat out in our favorite restaurants with good friends as long as they’re not too pricey and have menus with foods we understand which has become more difficult as we’ve aged; we’ve learned to love eating alone occasionally at the bar and conversing with fellow diners or a bartender.
39. We love babies. Kutchie coo.
40. We love some animals.
41. We love to snack, potato chips with ridges, peanuts, pretzels and will share.
42. We love to learn something new whether how to make biscuits from scratch, popovers, a perfect beef bourguignon, chicken piccata and the promise of a great recipe for eggplant parmigiana which we haven’t perfected.
43. We love to attend lectures and take classes to learn more about a subject that piques our interests such as music, art, history, a new language or our religion.
44. We love the smell of fresh baked goods whether bread, muffins, cookies!
45. We love to hear from those friends who we haven’t been in touch with for a long time.
46. We love getting well after an illness such as Covid, the flu or a bad cold or enjoying a full recovery after an operation.
47. We love our collections whether snow globes, vinyl records, miniatures for dollhouses and hardcover books. And we love them even more when they’re organized in neat rows so we can find them!
48. And here we are going to break our rule about not seeing red because we love red cars. With the movie Ferrari recently out, we drooled over the red beauty that resembles a finely engineered sleek piece of art.
49. We also love red foods: strawberries, raspberries, pomegranates, apples, cherries, red chewy candies, grapes (though one is more partial to green grapes), maraschino cherries in cocktails named for a little girl actress.
50. We love you, our dear readers, and your comments, particularly those that are kind and glow. 

We sum it up this way. The really important moments in life are those we love because to us they are special.

Feel free to share your loves with us in the comments section at the bottom of this blog.