Valentine B

I had wanted to do something lively this past Valentine's Day
but the family was either down with or recovering from Influenza B.

People laughed when I spelled out it’s full name in text
“It sounds like you are speaking from the Victorian era. Just say “the flu,”” a friend suggested.

After enduring a 103 temperature for three days, you just want to make sure people know.
It takes you out- mentally and physically.
This isn’t just a cold.
It’s Influenza B. It feels like something Victorian. 

So Valentine’s Day with a husband and daughter deep in their fevers.
I am just coming out of my own fever dream.

My six year old son is sitting at the kitchen counter 

We watch the sun go down on a romantic evening for other people.
I turn on the local college radio station and am surprised to hear a popular mainstream tune from the eighties.

They are taking love song requests from the public tonight and 

I can tell the nineteen year old hipster disc jockeys don’t quite know what to do 

with a request for Leather and Lace by Fleetwood Mac 

for Molly.

“We’ll take a look in the disc library,” they say, uncertain.

I love every moment of this interaction. 

This radio moment brings me back to life.

Happiness.

The song eventually floods my kitchen and my son asks to add it to his playlist 

(which mostly consists of thumping warehouse club music from the nineties and 

every version of Carol of the Bells).

He asks if he can make everyone toast for dinner and

we pull a stool up to the toaster.

This year my Valentine is learning how to wait 

thirty seconds 

until the heat of fresh toast warms the butter enough to spread easily. 

He is thrilled every time the bread “pops” 

My Valentine carefully serves his family with a proud disclaimer that

he, indeed, made their Valentine dinner.