The garden of our Valentine

Santiago, 14 February 

My dear Butterfly,

We knew it was true love when that ladybug reached our holding hands the day we first met. It happened when the sun was shining in the highest of the sky. I had already studied for my Bar exam, so I was eager to enjoy the little spare time I could afford. You were finishing college too, do you remember? Who would predict that the end of our professional education would concur with our relationship bursting like the Big Bang?

I remember those October evenings when eating our ice-creams ghosts in the plaza. Yet, we did not pay attention to the spiders and the spooky Halloween atmosphere. The spring of love bloomed through us. Hours passed by rapidly. We did not want to say goodbye and part to our separated homes. 

The summer of our love ended. Autumn and winter arrived with their problems: our first jobs, protocols to follow, and so on. They created all the arguments and difficulties we had to pass through. 

'How can you date a guy like him?' My father would say. 

'How can you date a girl like her?' Your mother would ask. 

'I hope you never marry. It would be a disaster,' the aunties said.

Our love was the rose, and their rejection of our relationship was the thorns we had to endure. They pinched us. We bled. I still cry sometimes when I see our scars and remember those moments. Those stupid comments ruined the most beautiful days of summer.

The memory of that tiny ladybug playing in our hands and the joy we felt when looking into each other's eyes that very first day were the reasons why we were not giving up. But was it worth it? It was a question I did every day when fighting for our love.

Regardless, on the darkest day of our winter during December, when we were shopping the Christmas presents, I knew that our love would blossom again with spring, stronger and more hopeful than ever. I just knew it. 

How did I know it? I knew it because a ladybug posed on my shoulder and made us stop arguing. 

'Hey, look!' You said. You took it and played with it in your hands.

That day, we discovered something marvelous: the little ladybug fought gravity! If you held it in your arm, it would walk to the sky, never to the ground. If you rolled your hand to have the little insect upside down with its face looking to the ground, in that vertical position, it would rotate with its legs until its face headed to the sky again. We did the experiment so many times that day. We were astonished! No matter what, the ladybug would insist on being optimistic and looking to the sky rather than being led to the ground until it reached the highest point of your hands and flew away. We looked at each other. That was our same attitude towards the obstacles of our happy ending. 

First, a ladybug gave us the drive to start our romance. Now, another ladybug was saving our relationship. Were they related? We laughed while making up a story of them being mother and daughter or maybe grandmother and granddaughter. Then we thought: What if they were males? Father and son? Grandfather and grandson? Anyway, those ladybugs were even better than Cupid because if the baby in diapers made people madly fall in love, ladybugs made us magically fall in love. Though our relationship had a freezing wind around it, the heat and the shining sun on the festive day were stronger than the cold. It was, by far, a Christmas miracle. That December was the turning point in our love story. 

It is a fortunate fact that roses can survive after removing their thorns. The day you picked up those scissors and pruned them away was so liberating. How beautiful was our love when cutting down all the negativity towards us! Shutting down all the toxic relatives was the miraculous remedy we necessitated. Who needs them when five guests are enough to celebrate our wedding, the most important day of our lives?

The following year, it was the birth of our little baby boy, Juan de Dios, the Christmas miracle we needed to convert those foes into allies. Who can resist the laugh of our little one? And how happy we were the day a little ladybug landed on our baby’s nose!

Then God blessed us with the birth of our twins, Clementina and María. How pretty daughters we had on New Year's Eve! We felt like fireworks were celebrating with us their arrival, not only the New Year but also the new lives that were beginning.

These little blessings sometimes acted like little monsters. When Juan de Dios broke the twins' Barbies, I was near to having a mental breakdown. Disciplining Clementina and María was all a challenge. Ironically, when we were broke, they demanded more toys, clothes, and money for going out with friends than when we were rich. 

Yet, we forgot all those problems when we saw them acting in the school's theater plays. Also, Clementina's poems are priceless. Juan de Dios is a gifted doctor now. And María, wow, a badass leader. They grew strong and then flew away like birds must do.

Why am I describing all these events of our lives in my Valentine's letter? Because I want you to remember that the outside atmosphere does not determine the weather of our love. Yes, we can have summer in Saint Valentine. Yes, we can enjoy the flowering of love even in September. No, being in our summer holidays does not guarantee that we will have warmth in our relationship. I write this to advise you to be hopeful when the cold arrives and be careful when the heat surrounds us. Every day, somehow, we must take care of our relationship and endure the different challenges life makes us face. That is, at least, the vow I take today and every day since our wedding. 

I love you with all of my heart. You are my support. I am yours. The one who says that love cannot win all the battles a partnership faces is the one who has never truly loved anybody in his entire life.

I hope this letter is like a rainbow on our special day.

With love,

Your flower. 

P. S.: I forgot to tell you that Clementina asked me yesterday by phone why my favorite insect is the ladybug. I told her succinctly that a ladybug saved our relationship in the harshest moments. 

'Really?' She asked. 'How?' 

I could not badmouth her great aunties nor her grandmother or grandfather. Why would I show her the thorns in the garden we had for so long taken care of? 

I only answered, 'Oh, if you knew. If you only knew.'