Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

This Is Dedicated to the One I Love

Dear Amanda,

You said you wanted a love letter for Valentine's Day this year, and I'm happy to oblige. You may not have wanted my devotion aired in public, but as you know all too well, I never do anything by halves. I've been reluctant to use your name here (though I probably have in a moment of absent-mindedness), as I still think of the eye-rollingly-named ChristianCarvajal.com as a promotional site for my writing. But y'know what? Against all my intentions, it's also become yet another clearinghouse for all my thoughts and emotions, popular or not. These thoughts, I imagine, will be popular, because you're popular. You're pretty much the easiest person to like I've met in years; and if you've ever had a true enemy, I'm unaware of it.

Oh, I could go on. I'd be all "romantical" and "schmoopy" and sickening, and Fates willing, no one but us would read past the first paragraph. But that's not the kind of love letter I decided to write. It's not the kind of love letter I'm inclined to write. Because what I love about you isn't just the same stuff everyone else loves about you. Yes, it absolutely does help that you're a looker, and your agreeable personality makes it easier to bear with you the days you're being maybe just the teensiest little molecular bit snappish about, say, parallel parking or my Friday afternoon punctuality. You have a terrific brain, and you've blessed me with ample opportunity to see it in action. Great minds like yours have edges, but your edges delight me. I love you most because you share my good qualities but refine them into grace, while adding strengths I'll probably never possess on my kindest of days.

I love the way you sleep, your lips parted softly; it's like I can see back to your childhood, way back before those adolescent years when you gave your family hell each Christmas morning.

I love how you chortle, deeply and unabashedly, at each wittily ribald remark--and I love the fact that many of those remarks are yours, not mine.

I love your open mind and the way you put it to work for an open heart.

I love that we can shop for groceries or do laundry and have more fun than most couples do on a date.

I love that you'd rather be shocked than bored.

I love that we can disagree about politics or religion or pretty much anything else--really disagree, mind you, never hiding it, never soft-pedaling our opinions--without losing an ounce of respect for each other.

I love that you're eagerly awaiting Iron Man 2, of all things (May 7, by the way) and can recite Ghostbusters from memory.

Some people say they can cook. You create joy on a plate.

Some people say they can sing. You bring chills.

Some people say they can tap dance--okay, nobody says that, but you actually can tap dance.

I love the little notes you tuck into my wallet. I know it's selfish to love you for things you do for me, but no one else ever wrote little notes and tucked them into my wallet. It makes my whole day go bulletproof.

I love how much my friends love you. I mean, how could they not, of course, but they really do love you, and so does my family.

I love the wicked glint in your eye each time you blatantly pit me and your mother against each other in board games, and the way you brace yourself rather than cutting and running when your uncle Kenny quotes Glenn Beck in my presence.

I love your perfectionism and your connoisseurship--and your love of a good sloppy hamburger.

I love your wicked gift of mimicry, even when you impersonate me as a blowhard, which I'm so totally not. For the most part. Per se.

Amanda, love, I thanked you in my book in what must have seemed a perfunctory manner. That's because I knew I'd be thanking you in every book for the rest of my life. You are indeed the one, finally, incontestably, my partner, my future, my love, my best friend.

Yours entirely,
Carv

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. I hope you have someone to curl up with this three-day weekend. As for me and Amanda and our friends, we're cooking sexy foods for each other and giving gifts and drinking wine and telling stories. I'll be back with more jabbering, probably on the subject of villains (bwahaha!) some night next week.

Love and peace.