SEVEN'S A CHARM (A Valentine's Diary Through The Years)

Today is our seventh Valentine's Day together.

I mentally check my checkered past and come up with a startling discovery. This is actually the most number of Valentine dates I've ever had with any man! My husband, Lorenzo, has beaten records set by my ex-husband (6 years) and ex-fiancee (5 years). This is cause for celebration. Bring out the sparkling cider! (I'm 5 months pregnant. Can't indulge.)

I remember our first Valentine date just like it was yesterday...

Saturday, February 14, 1998
Had a lovely dinner at Vieux Chalet, a quaint Swiss restaurant situated in a secluded spot somewhere in the Antipolo hills. We have dinner by candlelight at the terrace overlooking Metro Manila's city lights. We celebrate Lorenzo's first TV commercial, Metrobank, where he played the lead (a naval officer), and his upcoming commercial for San Miguel Beer. We end up closing the restaurant, being the last ones to leave. After dinner, we meet our friends, Roel and Lynnette, who assist us in preparing for Lorenzo's bodybuilding competition (aptly called Mr. Valentine), which was to be held the next day. Lorenzo dedicates the contest to me and ends up winning the heavy-weight and over-all titles. Even then, he was already MY Mr. Valentine.

Our second Valentine's Day was even more romantic...

Sunday, February 14, 1999
We celebrate Valentine's weekend in Baguio. We drive to the mountain city with our trusty alalay, Belen, and our driver, Sam. Lorenzo found accommodations in a secluded mountain inn owned by a family friend. We are the first people to stay in their new honeymoon cottage (and I must say we broke it in quite well!). Monday afternoon we rush back to Manila in breakneck speed and make it just in time for my 5:30 newscast in Channel 9.

It was during this trip that we found out Belen was pregnant. This was a portent of things to come. Two months later, Lorenzo and I found out we were anticipating too. During the following months, my poor husband had to deal with stares from people whenever we went grocery shopping with Belen. I guess we were a curious sight to behold: a handsome, muscle-bound man with two pregnant women waddling in his wake!

By the time our third Valentine's Day came, we had already moved back to the States. Lance, our firstborn, was a thriving three-month-old, and I was ready to try my hand at broadcasting here in the US...

Monday, February 14, 2000
Sereno, party of eight? We celebrate Valentine's with my husband's family. We all have a lovely dinner at Nijo Castle, a Japanese steak place in Newark, CA. It is a quadruple-date, with no less than the patriarch and matriarch, Tatay and Nanay, at the helm. Aside from Lorenzo and me, there were his sister, Selina and her husband, Gino, and Lorenzo's youngest brother Jun with his girlfriend. Baby Lance also tagged along and behaved impeccably. There was another cause for celebration that evening. Earlier in the day, I got a call from Rose Shirinian, News Director of KTSF-TV26 in San Francisco. I had just been hired as stand-in producer and anchor of "The Filipino Report", a show which received high viewership in the Bay Area because it came out after "TV Patrol", and before "Balitang K".

When we were still living in the Philippines, it was such a trip to see Lorenzo's commercials being played during my newscast. Never in our wildest dreams did we think the same thing would happen here in the States. As it turned out, one of The Filipino Report's biggest sponsors was LBC, and guess who the played the commercial's lead? Ya got it...Lorenzo!

Our fourth Valentine's was fraught with tension. We were going through a rough time with Lorenzo's custody proceedings, and his kids ended up losing their maternal great-grandmother, who suffered a heart attack on Valentine's Day, the very morning of her daughter's wedding...

Wednesday, February 14, 2001
I was 3 months pregnant with Troy, but was still able to squeeze into Lorenzo's favorite outfit, a red and black pantsuit, which he surprised me with in Manila. We had a delicious, if somewhat somber, dinner at L'Indochine, a chic new French restaurant in our neighborhood. The set menu was superb and the ambiance, with its dark paneled wood, silk pillows, and discreetly curtained booths, was elegantly exotic, but we wonder if it was worth the $100 tab. It was hard to enjoy dinner with Lance, our precocious toddler, dropping food all over the floor. By the time the creme brulee was laid in front of us, we had just about had enough. We gobbled our dessert down and made a beeline for the exit, promising ourselves we'd come back to try the duck a l'orange next time, sans Lance. We never made it back. The recession took its toll on snooty eateries like L'Indochine. The last time I passed there, it had morphed into an Indian restaurant called Bollywood.

This was to be the last of our Valentine dates. I had Troy in July 2001, and we settled down to the business of raising a growing family. September 11 came and changed the lives of everyone in the US, including ours. We were afraid my husband would be called to help defend Homeland Security, because he was an Army Reservist who used to do active infantry duty. Anticipating this, we decided to move to Modesto, to be closer to our family support group of brothers and sisters-in-law, who proved to be invaluable when Lorenzo was called to NCO training when Troy was just a month old. We found a lovely house just around the block from Selina's, and within five minutes away from the homes of Lorenzo's other brothers, Simon and Sever.

Thursday, February 14, 2002
For some reason, I can't remember what we did on our fifth Valentine's together. I've been racking my brain since last year, but still come up blank. Could it be that we actually DIDN'T do anything for the day of hearts? I check my date book and find a single entry: "Troy - 5 pm, Dr. Foulds". Ahhh, a clue. Dr. Carol Foulds is a dermatologist in Kaiser Milpitas. I vaguely remember bringing Troy in for a consult for his atopic dermatitis. After the appointment, Lorenzo and I elected to drive back to Modesto and have dinner there, but details remain fuzzy. Must be the epidurals.

I make a mental note to check credit card records for this date. I simply MUST find out what we did for Valentine's that year. Lorenzo and I would NEVER let this day pass without celebrating. With our two babies, I'm sure we ate at some family place. A nice, quiet, romantic restaurant was out of the question. By then, we were already grounded in reality.

Friday, February 14, 2003
By this time, Lorenzo and I, former dance club denizens, were in full family mode. In fact, instead of buying my husband anything romantic, I ended up giving him a coffee table book on the Oscars, because its black, tan and red cover design complimented our living room set perfectly. I wrap it up in paper shamelessly adorned with hearts, and enlist the services of my brother-in-law, Simon, who slipped the present and accompanying card into my husband's cubicle without his knowing. I still have Lorenzo's surprised reply in my voice mail. Later that day, I serve him a home-cooked Valentine dinner: Caribbean Jerk Ribeye Steak with asparagus and rice. Later that year, our dog eats the coffee table book.

As I look back at our past Valentine celebrations, I couldn't help but detect a trend. Here is a tale of two people, hopelessly in love, learning to tailor their lives according to the circumstances the Lord sends their way. I am thankful for our first two Valentines, when we could still be giddy like high school kids, celebrating a second chance at love, reveling in each other. Our love flourished during this brief time, nurtured by new experiences, which would form the basis for wonderful memories which would sustain us through the years, through thick and thin. This would pave the way for our next two Valentines, where we would take our first tentative steps toward domesticity, our strong bond giving way to accommodate our infant son, Lance. As our love grew, so did our family, and with Troy's arrival came more compromises and lifestyle changes, where Valentine's Day celebrations took a turn from the romantic to the familial.

But through it all, the love remains, and it continues to grow to this day, feeding on new experiences and new memories. Expanding. Evolving. Encompassing everything we come into contact with, everyday.

Saturday, February 14, 2004
Today is our seventh Valentine's together. I didn't get my husband a present. I didn't even get him a card. But years have made us wiser, and we know that whatever form it takes, the best gift is that which comes from the heart.

Even as I type this, Lorenzo is making me breakfast in his avowed quest to "fatten me up" since my last prenatal appointment. I am five months pregnant with our first daughter, and my OB-Gyn was worried that I had only gained one pound in a month at a time when I should be gaining a pound a week. These past few days, my husband has taken to reminding me to eat every so often, but I can't get myself to be irritated with him. His obvious love and concern shines through everything he does, and I can't help but love him even more.

He hands me breakfast. A toasted bagel with garden vegetable cream cheese, orange juice and a banana. It is the best Valentine's breakfast anyone has ever made for me. I give him a kiss, and tell him I love him.

Happy Valentine's Day, my Love. You will always be my Mr. Valentine.