Happy Valentine's Day!

I never hid the fact that when Quibbit and I met he was making 10K a year and living in the spare room of the writer he was working for as a personal assistant dash personal slave. I didn't care about his net worth when I started dating him. I only saw his amazing eyes, his beautiful smile, his enormous capacity for love (and loving me) and I saw how no one on the planet understood me the way Quibbit did. He noticed things about me that I thought were deep and buried … but he saw them as if they were shining right out at him.

We'd been dating around 3 months for our first Valentine's Day. Having no money doesn't mean you can't be romantic and Quibbit proved that. On our first Valentine's Day my sweetheart picked me up from work with a rose and a bag full of thoughtful presents and a home made card.

Luvviepuffaroo: Did you paint this yourself?
Quibbit: Yes.
Luvviepuffaroo: And this thing here… um … did you draw a MONSTER in the middle of the heart?
Quibbit: That's the sun.
Luvvie: Cuz it looks like a monster.
Quibbit: It's the sun.
Luvvie: Really? I mean it honestly …
Quibbit: The sun.
Luvvie: Why is the sun in the middle of the heart?
Quibbit: Because my love for you is as big as the sun, and it fills up my heart ...
Luvvie: I'll shut up now.

He then walked me across the Brooklyn Bridge and we watched the sun go down from the top of the world. When other women talked about the flowers and cards they got, I replied, "My Boo gave me the sunset …". And, you know, they were all a little jealous.

By the next Valentine's Day he'd broken free of WriterGuy and was working at a large publishing company. Ever thoughtful, Quibbit gave me a beautiful present from my favorite sudsy store (LUSH), a wonderful dinner, and got me tickets to Company because he knew that it was my first Stephen Sondheim album and best-loved Stephen Sondheim soundtrack. He sat in the audience that Valentine's night with me, holding my hand tightly as I tried not to make it obvious that I was crying profusely all through "Being Alive". Has a truer love song every been written?

Someone to hold you too close // Someone to hurt you too deep
Someone to sit in your chair // And ruin your sleep // And make you aware
of Being Alive
Someone to need you too much // Someone to know you too well
Someone to pull you up short // And put you through hell
And give you support for being alive - being alive

Make me alive, make me confused
Mock me with praise, let me be used
Vary my days, but alone is alone, not alive.

Somebody hold me too close // Somebody force me to care
Somebody make me come through // I'll always be there
As frightened as you of being alive
Being alive, being alive

Someone you have to let in // Someone whose feelings you spare
Someone who, like it or not // Will want you to share a little, a lot of
Being Alive ...

Make me alive, make me confused
Mock me with praise, let me be used
Vary my days, but alone is alone, not alive

Somebody crowd me with love // Somebody force me to care
Somebody make me come through // I'll always be there
As frightened as you to help us survive
Being alive, being alive,
Being alive, being alive.

The first time I heard Being Alive I was 13 years old and madly in love with Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock because he was the closest thing I had to a boyfriend. All my notions of love came from Broadway or movies but at least Sondheim was giving me a warts-and-all manual for what I was to expect. I knew that someday, someone would sit in my chair and ruin my sleep and take over my apartment (not to mention my life) and would annoy the hell out of me but not half as much as he loved the hell out of me. I started dreaming about him at 13 but it took another 25 year until he was sitting with me in the dark, in that theatre, letting me crush his hand as everything in my life came full circle.

Quibbit knew, as he had always known, as he knows still, that he makes me aware of Being Alive, and that that is the biggest gift any one person can give.

So it just makes sense that this Valentine's Day, 2008, during dessert, Quibbit got down on one knee in the Beekman Towers restaurant, overlooking all of Manhattan, and told me that he would love me forever. And then he put a ring on my finger and asked me to marry him. And it would only make sense that as much as I'd always known that Quibbit was The One, and as beautifully as we fit together, so perfectly that there was never any room for doubt, and as much as none of this came as a complete shock, I still couldn't stop crying, or hugging him, or kissing him. Because now I KNEW. And being able to KNOW is just an amazing feeling.

We laughed and laughed and kissed and kissed and finished dinner in a rush, desperately excited to jump out into the world. We went out onto the roof top of the Beekman and looked out over all of Manhattan, and all its lights glittered and shone below us, but none so brightly as my sapphire and diamond engagement ring.

As soon as we could we left and got ourselves to Central Park where we got into a horse drawn carriage and took the ride around the park, and even though it was cold and I needed to huddle under the blanket I also really needed to see my ring in every kind of light and so held it up for the whole ride so that I could look at it.

We called our parents and cabbed it home, and everything was giddy and joyful and almost painted, with every line of everything jumping out at me and vibrantly alive, moving and shimmering and more dimensional than it had ever been. And I almost couldn’t understand that it could be this different, or this breathtaking, or this wonderful, or this true. But it was, and it is.

And it will always be …