Many people are cynical about Valentine’s Day, calling it Hallmark Day or Interflora Day, and they roll their eyes at restaurants and their special “romantic” menus for couples. I can see how it’s easy to mock this kind of “commercially enforced romance”, but like everything (for example… Christmas!) it’s all about how you feel. I’ve personally never felt much either way about this particular day, but then this happened.

While walking to a Valentine’s Day dinner I had been invited to (not romantic, just with friends) I saw this man and his beautiful dog sitting in Plaza San Lorenzo, so I stopped to take a photo. The dog heard me and turned, and then the man turned, so we started talking. I heard about how he came to have this dog, about his leg pain, his smoking habit, and a few other personal tidbits. Then he looked up at the clock on the church and said his wife would be just getting off work so he had to get home. He said he had prepared a special Valentine’s meal for her and had also got her a gift. And I thought … this is the true meaning of Valentine’s Day.  🙂