On love & people watching.

• SUNFLOWER SEED TART 

Valentine’s Day is often chosen as the time to pop the question. I said yes to my boyfriend on Valentine’s Day twenty one years ago after a night of drinking. He had to repeat himself  the following day, just to make sure I wasn’t simply under the influence! 

I said yes again, and we married less than three months later. Before then, it had never before been much of a holiday for me, as I felt that people who were truly in love didn’t need an official occasion to proclaim it.

Of course, there are many people who take Valentine’s Day very seriously, bestow expensive gifts, bouquets of roses and spend too much on oysters and boutique chocolates. 

Even though it marks our engagement anniversary, my husband and I rarely celebrate it; we often tell each other “I love you,” sip bubbly in nice restaurants, and that’s the way we like it. We did go out for dinner this year, and it was romantic as we adorably cuddled together at our table (sitting under an A/C vent, I was freezing, and had to leave my seat across from him to keep warm!).

Love is universal but the way couples express their love is unique, complex and often cryptic. When we as mediums communicate for married couples in spirit, we must try to explore their relationship dynamic in a way that doesn’t pry but capsulizes their relationship to their loved ones.

In my experience, if a couple in spirit arrive together on the same level, that usually means a close and loving relationship. If one appears smaller or behind the other, that indicates a less outgoing personality for that partner. I believe all spirit people project their characteristic essences onto a medium’s consciousness so that they are easy to read, and memories of similar people are stimulated to make sense of these spirit strangers.

We must be open to understanding the different shades of love and not interpret what we feel or sense, but explain how the couple shows themselves to the medium. Even though I felt cold during our lovely dinner last night, my love was certainly unfazed. Looking around at the other couples, it was clear that everyone was enjoying themselves; obviously, unhappily coupled people wouldn’t be celebrating that night.

There were young couples staring into each other’s eyes, older couples chatting happily and sharing dishes, a hipster couple with a mac-n-cheese encrusted child relaxed at a table near the bar. Looking around, I quickly assigned emotions to the groups in between sips of my mescal cocktail. I wasn’t really psychically reading them, but just casually labeling their interactions as “loving” or “interested” or “heavily involved” in such a way that characterized their sense of love.

Try people watching and labeling behaviors. It is always useful for mediums. I wonder what people may have thought seeing me leaning heavily onto my husband to keep warm? The older couple next to us gave us a tip: turn the table around so it’s wider to accommodate our shared plates. I thought it was sweet that they were also sitting that way, and said so, but the wife told me it was simply better because her husband was hard of hearing.