the valentine project, part 4.

February 14, 2010, Kingston, Ontario (and points north).

This Valentine's Day actually began on February 13th. It was a Saturday, and my brother's band played a show at the Grad Club that night. Tom drove down from the woods for the occasion--it was no small feat getting him out of the wilderness, especially once the snow had started falling, and I was pretty damned happy that he trekked out. We'd gotten back from Mexico about a month earlier, and ever since our return we'd been closer than ever--more comfortable, quietly and easily moving in and out of one another's lives, finding our patterns. I'd been in love with him for two years already, but that winter, I fell for him all over again--this time openly instead of secretly, this time in a way that was reciprocated, reflected back, absorbed. It was the most normal we'd ever been.

So that Saturday night we slid down snowy streets to the Grad Club. My best friends Harold and Danielle came with us. We drank a lot of Guinness. After my brother's set, I was talking with him at the back of the bar. He was going through a rough time, and told me as much. All I could really do was hug him hard and fierce, and it hurt so much not to be able to do anything else.

Tom and I stumbled home, and on the way he told me that his cat, Puff, hadn't come home yet. The thing about Puff is that he was, categorically, the greatest cat you will ever have: funny and stand-offish and cuddly and the best hunter imaginable. Puff had somehow survived four winters in the wilderness, killing mice and frogs and snakes, taking off for days at a time and coming back like a conquering hero. The thing you need to know about Tom is that he was, in many ways, closer to his animals than to his people. He loved that cat so much--not as much as he loved his dog, but a close second. He always talked about how Puff was going to meet an untimely end in the woods at some point, but it was always an abstract, half-joking hypothesis. He never fully believed it would come to pass. So when it did, when a week had gone by without so much as a paw print in the snow, we knew that it was probably the end of Puff the Magic Kitten's reign over the Canoe Lake homestead. And as Tom finally admitted this to me in the early hours of February 14th, as he cried so hard his shoulders shook and his legs gave way, I put my arms around him. For the second time that night I felt like I couldn't really solve a damned thing, so I did the only thing I knew how to do, which was hold on. The only way out is through, as they say.

The next morning we slept late and woke up feeling fuzzy-headed.

"I'm taking you out," Tom announced. "We're going out for breakfast."

"Do you know what day this is?" I asked him, fairly certain he did not. "Do you know how many other idiots are taking their girlfriends out for breakfast as we speak?"

His face clouded over momentarily, and then cleared. "I don't give a shit," he declared. "We're going."

It was the closest to romance he got.

It took two tours around town, one unsuccessful attempt to find a parking spot at Denny's, and finally a trip out to the Township before we finally settled on a restaurant that seemed to be somewhat empty. It was an All You Can Eat Sushi place, and it was fantastic. We gorged ourselves on MSG-laden tuna rolls and then made our way back out to the country for the rest of the weekend; thirty-six hours of urban living was about Tom's threshold.

That winter, Tom still had the place on Canoe Lake. It was one of the best winters for skating I'd ever seen: the lake froze in December and stayed that way till March. Canoe Lake was originally part of a longer river, until a causeway constructed around 1910 dammed it up, but it still had a long, estuarial shape. It was also a deep lake, so deep that even when the ice was thick and firm, it was blue-black and ominous instead of white. It was like gliding over a prehistoric black hole. That afternoon, we laced up our skates and shot up and down the lake over and over, to the tiny island we'd swim to every summer and back, throwing balls for the dog and letting the wind numb our cheeks. There was not a soul around for miles. That waterway was our wide world.

That night, we warmed our bones by the woodstove, drank red wine, and watched Tootsie on the television, passing out partway through. I remember waking up to him dragging me off the couch, up the stairs, into bed, where I fell asleep again to the sound of the wind whipping at the windows.

The next day was a holiday Monday. Tom drove me into town just in time for the arrival of an army of librarians on my doorstep--we were celebrating Pancake Tuesday a day early, since we all had the day off. We spent the afternoon drinking champagne and gorging ourselves on white flour and syrup, and when everyone left, I had a nap.

This is the Valentine's Day that breaks my heart the most. It was a weekend in which the world handed me all the things I love: music, family, food, friends, boys who need me, towns that feel like home, and long, clear paths to skate away on. In some ways I do not think I will ever know this perfect confluence again. In other ways, I know it was not perfect at all, not by a long shot. But at the time, I just couldn't stop falling in love, with everything, with everyone, over and over.