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I remember Valentine's Day, 1989. I was living in Vancouver at the time. I commuted about 25 miles from a suburb to downtown
Vancouver every day for work. At that particular time I was commuting on the bus. It started to snow sometime during the day. In Vancouver, when it snows, it's just best to declare a national emergency and be done with it. The reaction to snow by
Vancouverites is of epic proportions. The city virtually shuts down...grinds to a complete halt. And, naturally, no one in Vancouver is ever prepared for snow. This is mostly because it seldom snows in Vancouver, and maybe just a bit because
Vancouverites aren't necessarily the brightest bulbs in the pack. Hey...I was one, too.
On this particular Valentine's Day offices starting shutting down early so that employees had at least a ghost of a chance of getting home for sweetheart
suppers. I believe us ruralites were released from duty at around 3:00. Sadly, the bus drivers must also have been released from duty at some hour prior to 3:00. Myself and a travelling companion waited tirelessly in the cold and wet for several hours.
We touched down in Surrey at 8:30 that evening. My girlfriend had a baby the next day. Not the one I was travelling with, another one. She had a boy. Nicholas. Nicky is now 11. Well, he will be tomorrow. I haven't seen him in over 5 years. I don't see
that girlfriend any more either. Nor do I celebrate Valentine's Day with the husband that welcomed me home that cold night with a warm hug.
So, today I make a resolution. Valentine's Day seems a more appropriate day, to me, than New Years Day, to
make life decisions. What prompted me to make this resolution is a conversation I had with Koko yesterday. I hadn't talked with her in several weeks, and happened across her on ICQ as I was doing some research on the Internet. She asked how I was. The
floodgates opened. Depressed. Feeling a mite bit crummy about things these days, I told her. Her answer to me? "I will call you, sweetie."
She had visions of grandeur, that sweet Koko. She planned to solve all my problems. She tried too. She
really tried. But, as I told her how impossible it all seemed, she relented to simply finding a way to make me smile. But after I hung up the phone I realized something that I hadn't before. It wasn't up to her to solve my problems. It is up to me. So,
as fate would have it, and quite by accident, I discovered a book I had bought about 3 years ago. "8 Weeks to Optimum Health" by Dr. Andrew Weil. I flipped it open and started to read. I finally put it down at 12:30 this morning.
Smart man that
Weil character. I'm on a new road now. I have some plans. I have a goal. I feel positive about it. Good on Koko. Good on Dr. Weil. Good on me.
And, for the first time in 11 years, it is snowing again on Valentine's Day.
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