True Romance

I repeat, I have never been typically romantic. Even when I read trashy Regency romances (I was a teenager, they were fun, and I would read them again), the usual fantasized scenes involving a sprained ankle and a horsebacked savior (that one is courtesy of Jane Austen) were mentally absent. 

I believed, from an early age, that romance doesn't really mean much. It isn't proof of love to buy someone a bouquet from the drugstore while picking up antacids. It's not effort. It's a sweet gesture. At the end of a breakup, no man complains, "But I bought you flowers!" 

I would actually prefer a bunch of parsley. More useful.

Due to divine timing, to quote my mother-in-law, Han and I had "the trial by fire." When someone is there for you when your world is falling apart? That's romance I believe in. 

As does Heather Havrilesky.