St. Valentine’s Day: The Day Humanity Celebrates Love With Explicit Romance

Adebimpe Olujide

Who's not romantic on February 14 each year? Even the fisherman didn't forget to buy his wife Aso-Oke and the pepper seller in the local market remembers to prepare her husband's favourite pounded yam with efo riro laced with bush meats from all walks of life. “Baalemi eni ni Balentine,” she says to her husband in Yoruba. When interpreted directly it means: Darling, today is 'Balentine!'

Some couples celebrate love 24/7 so to them Valentine's Day is just like any other day, just like a child that relishes fried rice with chicken or turkey regularly would see Christmas as special but not because of the meal after all nothing unusual about it, unlike her counterpart who takes rice with chicken once in a year which is on Christmas day.

There are many versions of the origin of St. Valentine's Day so I won't bore or bother you with any. Many essential, crucial things in life are invisible, abstract, untouchable yet irresistible, unfathomable and often mysterious. Air, love, joy, success, human mind and spirit and the like.

I've never seen where it was documented that an African man shouldn't help his wife in the kitchen, I'm equally yet to confirm that maltreating your wife and shouting at her is a sign of authority that an African man should embrace. Ignorance, sheer ignorance! The subject of romance is more common with the elite than the unlettered.

Love and romance breathe, live everyday of the 365 days of the year, therefore we should register it in our minds and embrace express, explicit demonstration of love throughout the year. Orientate yourself and let your cognition messaged your emotions and actions consequently.

There are two types of love – platonic and romantic love, which I label white and red love respectively! Mother-child love, love between siblings, relatives, business associates, friends irrespective of gender could be Platonic as well in as much as the love doesn't go beyond the border of 'innocent' love.

However, when a man and woman are very close people find it pretty difficult to believe they are Platonic friends. Romantic love basically is that which involves sexual intimacy at present or in the nearest future.

I often nurse an unconfirmed idea in my mind that the least romantic woman is more romantic than the most romantic man. How true? Perhaps very true! Women are very emotional, far emotional than men. That's why their version of love or hate is usually possessive, overwhelming and more powerful than an erupting volcano hence its fall out is grave sometimes fatal to one or the other and in some few instances to both partners.

Love is a behavior so is romance but romance I believe is the byproduct of love, the red love. This is because you first fall in love before you begin to speak the language of romance to your love. Romance is a relative phenomenon because the most romantic thing to Lamidi may be the least romantic to Lamido.

Love always beckon on romance the way Coffee usually invite hot water and Garri often invite groundnut and/or sugar for vacations to a city some inches below sea level but they'd never got there alive for they always die and are put in the morgue called tummy and later buried in the soakaway, the cemetery of foods. The useful parts of foods are used and later cremated, the heat of which warms our bodies and often come out through our mouth when we're breathing.

If your partner pampers you in public or private for ulterior motives, selfish reasons that's not affection but affectation and sooner than later you'll realize this. You can give without loving but you can't love without giving, please note that the giving in this context transcends money or material gifts.

Romance could be exhibited indoors or outdoors. The following are various romantic gestures of note:

1. Kneeling down on one leg to propose marriage to your fiancée.

2. Calling a radio station to play your partner's favourite music on her birthday, your wedding anniversary or on any conventional day.

3. Vacations in choice cities, exotic hotels around the globe.

4. Going to the movies together.
5. Organizing a surprise birthday, wedding anniversary… for your soul-mate

6. Strolling hand-in-hand in the woods or beach to savour nature, even strolling together in the neighbourhood at dusk or jogging together at dawn.

7. Heavenly hugs and kisses.
8. Magical fingers with sensational touches.
9. Breakfast in bed most especially when prepared by the man.

10. Moonlit dinner in the garden.
11. Candlelit dinner.
12. Poem recitations and song compositions
13. Cooking, washing or bathing together
14. Candlelit bubble bath with Champagne
The list is endless but the last but not the least here which many men don't realize is that

15. Giving listening ears to your wife or fiancée is highly romantic! Men usually find this a bit difficult even when the newspaper, laptop or English premiership is not in vogue.

Love is the gift, the packaging is romance. Some gifts are wonderful but the wrapper horrible conversely, some gifts are horrible but the wrapper wonderful and lastly some gifts are wonderful and the wrapper beautiful which make them irresistible. Therefore, how you express your love determines how romantic you are.

When I see a romantic husband
I 'see' a wife – enjoying a 7-star life!
I WENT OUT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT LOVE AND ROMANCE FROM LEARNED PEOPLE ON THE SUBJECT OF LOVE. SO I INTERVIEWED THEM ON WHAT THEY SEE AS THE MOST ROMANTIC GESTURE FROM THEIR SIGNIFICANT OTHERS.

These are their opinions and perceptions:
ADEBIMPE OLUJIDE (MD: Daffodils Undies World.)
“My home isn't a home of once-in-a week romance for romance is part and parcel of our love life. So I can't say categorically his most romantic gesture; each one is unique and therefore stands out. Many things come together, add up to give breath to romance and it's not just about looking sensuously into each other's eyes and kissing. In the context of marriage, being alone together with your soul-mate signals and triggers the romance button in you and makes you creative and sensual creativity is the beginning of romance. An adventurous, sensuous lover would always be a romantic lover. In summary, 'fine, free and fair' behind and beyond closed doors define romance.”

AFOLABI ALABA SAMSON (Post-graduate student of Physiology University of Ibadan {UI})

“From what I learnt from the book of Gray Chapman, the author of 'The 5 Love Languages,' her love languages are gifts and quality time spent with me. Both of them are her peak of romance and they go together so I find difficult to separate.”

AMAKA OKONKWO (a sophomore student of Pharmacy {UI})

“All his gestures are very romantic so I can't say categorically the most romantic but they come as a thief in the night if you know what I mean.”

AMINAT YUSUFF (retail entrepreneur and boss: Teju Afrikclassic Boutique.)

“He renders a helping hand in the kitchen no matter how small, that's the most romantic thing he'd ever done yet he keeps doing it!”

BANJO REBECCA (MD Ahmreb Stores.)
“He bought me a car on a normal day as his expression of love and action speaks louder than words, that singular gesture to me is the peak of romance!”

JIDE AKINADE
Secretary of Theatre Arts and Movie Practitioners Association of Nigeria, (TAMPAN) formerly (ANTP) Oyo State Chapter. “My wife is Evangelist. Janet Modupe Akinade. She surprises me every year but last year Valentine's Day was different for what she did was too romantic for me to imagine. After prayers in the morning she had asked me who I loved most and I told her assertively that I loved none else better than her, my darling wife and the lovely mother of my five promising children. Later that evening after my dinner, she brought out the masterpiece of all her artworks, she's an artist. She brought it to the living room with one of my children and later told the child to leave. She removed the covering from the artwork. She had drawn a beautiful tree with shade in the background with a picture of me, herself and our five children and wrote:

I LOVE YOU MY HUSBAND BECAUSE OF MY CHILDREN, EVEN IF WE HAD NO CHILD I WOULD LOVE YOU DEARLY: THIS IS TO YOU STRAIGHT FROM MY HEART.

This year by the grace of God, I'd surprise her as well!”

LYNDA OKERE (a Part II student of the Department of Communications and Language Arts UI, Ibadan)

“Most romantic thing he ever did was driving all the way from Port Harcourt to Ibadan to come say hello to me. I was surprised and elated at the same time.”

TOYIN LAWANI
“My wife organized a secret birthday party for me. You won't believe from conception through planning to execution she dropped no iota of hint so I had a zero idea about the whole thing and that was ingenuity, the highest of heights of romance for me!”

Wishing you all a Happy Valentine's Day celebration!

Olayemi Ogunojo.

ADEBIMPE OLUJIDE