Men of America, it's time for a revolution! Death to the clichés of Valentine's Day! Enough flowers! Enough chocolate! Enough jewels! This shopworn trio has degraded Feb. 14 into a paint-by-numbers ordeal. Every year, millions of panicked boyfriends and husbands waste their money on trite tokens that violate the first principle of gift-giving: A good gift is carefully customized, aimed with precision at a particular heart.
Flowers are the epitome of generic, as sendable to your mother on her birthday as they are to the woman who makes you glad to be a man. But because they're all-purpose, they lack power. The same is true of chocolate and baubles. They're pathetic, off-the-rack default gift choices by guys who, because they haven't been paying attention to the details of the woman they claim to love, have no better idea about how to salute her. Here's a sure-fire lameness-indicator: If you and your buddy could swap the Valentine's Day gifts you got for your women, they're no good, miles beneath her dignity, yours and, heck, even love itself.
This year, get her a gift that busts through the clichés and shouts the message every woman longs to hear: that you see her in particular, that you appreciate her virtues, her enthusiasms, that you are smitten with her, this one particular green-eyed beauty with the champagne laugh, the tender heart and the body that's God's best work. Don't panic. It's easier than it sounds. Don't dial 1-800-anything. Just follow this step-by-step plan.
Step 1
Choose one of her special interests as your gift theme: gardening, music, tennis, sex, traveling, lotions that smell great, working out, anything about which she's enthused. The narrower the focus, the better. If she enjoys making pasta, that's a stronger theme than just cooking. Yoga is sharper than fitness, and lavender is a much better place to start than some general sense that she likes fragrant goops. Your choice is key; it has to reveal that you're attuned to her. Remember, your goal is not to declare some vague generalized love, but to celebrate your delight in this unique, loveable woman.
Step 2
Buy a medium-sized woven basket (12 to 15 inches across), a few sheets of colorful tissue paper, a tube of wrapping paper and a roll of ribbon. Don't worry, my brothers, no advanced arts-and-crafts skills will be required. But the packaging of your Valentine's Day present is as important as its substance.
Step 3
Go to a store that specializes in stuff regarding your theme and cruise through, selecting a handful of small (and inexpensive) items with which you're going to fill the basket. Think gadgety, Christmas-stocking-stuffer type things. If she's a gardener that could include a small specialty spade, a bag of tulip bulbs, a cool set of clippers. For a chef, score a pasta hook, a lemon zester, some exotic whisk. If she's a bath-babe, try sponges, a tub pillow, a fig candle. A woman who travels on business would love a collection of make-travel-easier gizmos. Favor quirky, oddball specialty items, and keep in mind the second rule of gift-giving: It should be something that the receivers would never buy for themselves but would nonetheless get a big kick out of having. You'll need at least five items, but seven or more is better.
Step 4
Poof the tissue paper into the bottom of the basket and, channeling your inner window designer, arrange the items in the basket in what might be described as a bountiful cornucopia of small but cunning considerations.
Step 5
Cut a long (24-inch) piece of ribbon and unroll a large swath of wrapping paper (colorful side down) on the floor. Put the basket in the center, and then draw the paper up around it, gathering the paper up above the basket. Think of a cartoon bag of cash. Tie the ribbon around the gathered wrapping paper above the basket. Do not worry if this looks crummy, as though it was wrapped by a chimpanzee. That's actually a plus. When a guy ventures outside his comfort zone (wrapping paper and ribbon), women see it as touching. Most often, a woman's response to a poorly wrapped gift is to think "How sweet, the big lug tried to wrap this," not "My boyfriend is a chimpanzee."
Step 6
You're about to write a poem. Just two lines, aka a couplet. It has to 1) describe something about her and 2) assert that you're the luckiest guy on earth. That's all. Submitted for your consideration: "Beauty, charm, and grace so great/ I'm a lucky man to have my Kate." What's that? She's not named Kate? Well, if she's Jane or Elaine, then she's got a dazzling "brain." If she's Susan, she's amusin'. The word "queen" rhymes with Eileen and Maureen and … many others. If you can't think of a word that rhymes with her name, a jerry-built rhyme can have wit. Kathy can make a man so "hathy." Don't sweat the quality of the rhyme. A bad one can work for you like the chimpanzee-wrapping does, as in, "Awwww, he loves me enough to try poetry." Here's a fallback courtesy of Shakespeare: "For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings/ That then I scorn to change my state with kings." Write it on a card in a romantic Heathcliff-ian script, as though it were scrawled in a hurry during a windstorm on the moor. Tape it to the package, and you're done.
Above all, people long to be seen clearly and to be appreciated in their full them-ness. This just-for-her gift will do the trick. She'll know you've been paying attention. No big deal—just the ultimate sign of respect. And if you really want to move the woman who fills your heart, try this: A few months from now on May 12—or June 8 or Aug. 3 or any day on which flowers are not required—come through the door with a handful of posies you picked up at the fruit stand for $6 on your way home. Say something schmaltzy and—this is key—true, along the lines of "These beautiful things made me think of you." The impulsive purposelessness of the gesture will thrill her. And she deserves that, doesn't she? She's a wonderful, good-hearted, beautiful girl, you lucky, lucky guy.
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