Are you ready? It’s here. Hallmark sales spikes, chocolate overloads, scented candles, perfume and flowers top the credit card sales, and people tapping into their sometimes under-utilized romance files.

I do love lots of things and people. All kinds of love. Friendship love. Loyalty love. Compassion, fondness, affection. Things that I love.

But I admit it. I’m also a romantic–big time. My heart is on my sleeve. A part of my heart holds deep abiding love. My emotions run the gamut when it comes to caring/affection/love. One of my favorite scenes in a movie is the opening credits scene in Love Actually. Families, couples, friends, people of all ages, sizes, shapes and colors greeting each other at Heathrow Airport with hugs, kisses, laughing, crying. Makes me tear up and smile at the same time. And then I can sob at one of the last scenes in Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff carries Cathy to the window so she can see the moors and smell the heather. (Multiple tissue rating if it’s the Laurence Oliver and Merle Oberon 1939 movie.)

So when the calendar on the refrigerator gets flipped to the February page, I’m ready to celebrate that incredible organ, the heart.

Love

Some quotes that get me going about love:

Everybody loves something, even if it’s just tortillas. ~ Trungpa Rinpoche

Two-minute free write: I love … pizza, sitting on the beach, cherries, smelling the ocean, seeing the sun rise from my patio, watching my husband make coffee because he is totally immersed and at ease in that one morning activity, going through an art gallery where colors abound, naps, my friend JoAn’s carrot cake, walking a labyrinth, books, my office which is also my sanctuary and my creative writing site.

Suggestion: Do a two-minute free write about love. Can you stop at two minutes?

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Ya gotta learn to laugh. It’s the way to true love.  ~ John Travolta in Michael

I love to laugh. Of course it doesn’t mean I ”fall in love” with my laugh buddies. But laughing relaxes me, and I’m more apt to see love when it’s offered. Laughing helps me forget the “shoulds,” worries, and small dark clouds that can drift across my emotional radar screen. Can you be mad or sad when you’re laughing? Can you be worried when you’re laughing so hard that you actually snort?

My friend Majda had one of those infectious laughs, and she laughed easily–at visual things, at stories I told her, at things we did together. I miss her. Remembering her laughter helps me remember how I loved her.

Suggestion: Who makes you laugh? Tell them. Write about them. How often do you spend time with them?

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I was at a party feeling very shy because there were a lot of celebrities around, and I was sitting in a corner alone and a beautiful young man came up to me and offered me some salted peanuts and he said, “I wish they were emeralds”, as he handed me the peanuts and that was the end of my heart. I never got it back.   ~ Helen Hayes

This has got to be one of the most loving, romantic “scenes” I’ve ever read. I can see it. I can hear the background noise at this party–music, laughing, the range of voices in conversations. And the beautiful woman sitting, waiting, although at that moment she didn’t know she was waiting.

When I first heard my Hank’s voice, I felt a jolt in my heart. What the heck is this? Heartburn?But it was followed by a kind of excited feeling in my stomach and heart. I looked around to see where that measured voice with the easy listening tone was coming from. Then I saw him, but by then my heart had moved towards his. Lucky me to have followed that jolt.

Suggestion: Write about love.

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And my personal favorite, for fun and for love:

A man should kiss his wife’s navel every day.             ~ Nell Kimball

May you find love every day, not just in the love month.

Ethel Lee-Miller blogs regularly about people, the power of words, and the writing life. She is the author of Thinking of Miller Place, and Seedlings, Stories of Relationships. She also enjoys sharing stories at Odyssey Storytelling, Tucson Tellers of Tales, and just about anywhere there’s a mic.