Love Day

You should always carry personal holidays with you.

We already do, mostly: birthdays, anniversaries, days that we remember a friend or relative who died. What about other personal holidays? Some friends celebrate "Gotcha Day," the day that they adopted each of their rescue dogs.

For me, I remember the first time I fell in love.  It was 1984, and I was sixteen. I'm older now, and maybe so is she, if she's made it so far. We kept in touch for a few years, but I lost track of her eventually. She probably doesn't wear her hair so long anymore, or wear berets quite as often, but I doubt she's any taller than she was back then. I'm good at finding people, but she happens to have a ridiculously common name - so common that when a movie about a girl with her name came out in 2009, the producers held a publicity event that gathered together dozens of women with that same name.

In retrospect, maybe it was just a teenage infatuation with a girl who flirted with me at a Model United Nations. But it was a life-changing event, and the feelings it generated have provided the standard by which I have measured such things since then. Every year since then, I have commemorated the day I met and fell in love with Beth Cooper. Wherever she is, whatever she's doing, I wish her well.

What personal holidays do you carry with you?