The best thing I read on Valentine’s Day

“I suppose all I’m saying is that I have recently learned that our youthful patterns do not have to cripple us forever. Sometimes, our curses can be broken. Sometimes, we learn to make the gnocchi.”

Rebecca Traister is a favorite of mine, so links to her articles are pretty much always a must-read.

But I wasn’t expecting a 10-year-old Valentine’s Day piece to be the type of writing that makes me feel like my life is better for having read it.

Especially given why she posted it.

I once wrote about my friend Michael, who died this fall. It was an essay that began with how I'd dumped him on Valentine's Day. There's lots about this old piece that makes me cringe now, but I'm posting it because I miss him so, so desperately today: https://t.co/XJ4sGQFo6N

— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) February 14, 2018

Had this been a story that started with an eighth-grade Valentine’s Day breakup, rode on the parallel but seemingly unrelated tracks of dating and cooking and concluded with the tracks meeting at a boyfriend who was a fantastic cook and finally getting gnocchi right, it would have been a story skillfully done by a skillful writer.

But that last paragraph — that’s what raises it to another level entirely.

Our youthful patterns do not have to cripple us forever.

Sometimes, our curses can be broken.

Sometimes, we learn to make the gnocchi.

As for the pictures, they’re of Abbey Chapel at Mount Holyoke College, where I got married.

Since I was writing about Valentine’s Day, I thought it was appropriate.

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