Valentine's Day, 2011

While queuing up for my dinner this evening, I had to control my urge to pick up a coin a woman had accidentally dropped onto the floor  and use it to buy my dinner which was exactly the cost of that coin from the floor. I have never treasured money this much before. I have also never been this broke before, and not able to tell anyone about it (now you know). As if M would even care.

Before I left the apartment this morning, the landlady arrived to run her usual housekeeping errands at the apartment. She asked me if I had joined some sort of Alpha Bible study program before. Just last weekend, she had excitedly said we could go take an evening walk together one of these weekends when the weather is good.  A strange pang of sadness started to well up within me when I realized how much this landlady wanted some form of substitute to fill up that void in her life when things had not worked out that well in her family life long ago.

 “How was your Valentine’s Day yesterday? I played mah-jong with my lady friends yesterday. No one mentioned anything about Valentine’s Day, hahaha,” landlady said.

“Oh, nothing much. Just busy with work,” I answered, somehow sensing the landlady’s pain and loneliness.

I kept myself very busy at work on Valentine’s Day this year. After work, I rushed to that evening class I had just started to attend. For our class presentation, volunteers went to the front of the class to present their thoughts on Valentine’s Day. I realized there were many single men and women in that class, one of whom is a divorcee who had loudly and proclaimed her single status to everyone, added with her intention to date again. That’s the kind of intention I would not wish to think about anymore after this.

“This is the Valentine’s Day card that my husband had given to me 26 years ago. I’m still keeping it to remind me of that one time when our love was still strong,” so said the crazy brave and bubbly divorcee, much to everyone’s amusement.

It was already very late when I got back to the apartment. Valentine’s Day was almost over by then. Along the way home, I had to pretend I had not seen girls walking around with their boyfriends; girls holding red roses; couples sitting together on roadside benches. But I could still imagine and remember those unwanted snapshots in my mind so very vividly while writing about this.

What a day it had been. I was so glad I managed to keep myself extremely busy.

As I was about to enter my room and call it a day, I heard the sounds of drumbeats pounding from my housemate’s radio and a girl moaning excitedly in my housemate’s room. I soon realized my housemate’s BFF who spends every day and night at the apartment isn’t exactly her BFF.

At least both girls care for each other and were able to spend a meaningful Valentine’s Day together this year behind closed doors and also have their love for each other unknowingly made known to this accidental passerby.