02/14/11
As writers and readers of romance, we love to be swept off our feet by dashing and devastatingly handsome heroes. Whisked away to rose-petaled bedrooms beside sapphire seas and offered chocolate, champagne and (fill in the X-rated blank)–not necessarily in that order.
But this is the real world, and while we may have our own personal heroes in our lives, chances are slim they’re spending today planning how to fulfill all our erotic dreams and make all our wishes come true. Yet I’m betting
chances are pretty good you can already think of lots of ways your hero has shown his love for you.
Maybe he brings you breakfast in bed when you’re sick, or croons love songs to you along with the radio, or maybe he always remembers to put the seat down. But perhaps if you’re really lucky, there’s one instant that stands out in your memory as the ultimate knight in shining armor event you’ll always cherish.
While my husband shows his love in thousands of tiny ways every day, there is one such sweep-me-off-my-feet moment I treasure to this day.
Fresh out of college, I decided to spend a year abroad in England working. But as the weeks wore on and jobs and funds grew scarce, I realized I was never going to make it the whole year. I was pathetically and completely homesick. I don’t remember the phone call to my husband-then boyfriend, but I must have sounded desperate. He quit his job, applied for an emergency passport, maxed out his credit card to book his flight, and flew to London within the space of days. I still savor the moment I stood in Gatwick Airport seeing him stride out of Customs towards me. It was my ultimate, be-all and end-all, romantic experience. (Although when I tell him that, he looks at me like I’m crazy.)
So today, in honor of Valentines Day, I want to hear about your most romantic moment. Or—since we’re lovers of fiction—if you wish, you can describe what your most romantic moment would be. Reality or fantasy, I want to hear about it!
17 Responses
This is going to sound strange, but one of my most memorable moments of being swept off my feet was when I was five years old. It was the day the kindgergarten kids were being allowed to observe first grade. This was my first glimpse of Catholic school, and Sister was a very different article from Mrs. Wood. The nuns still wore habits, corporal punishment was alive and well, and the first graders seemed dauntingly serious and smart. The hands of the clock did not move.
I sat through that whole, awful, terrible, very bad morning feeling like the rest of my life was going to be spent in this prison, when finally noon rolled around. My brother, who is thirteen years older than I am, drew the duty to go fetch the little scholar, and he rolled into that classroom like Dirty Harry having fun, flirted with Sister, tossed me up on his shoulders and said something like, “Let’s blow this firetrap, kid.” I had to duck to get through the door but no little girl was ever more pleased to see her big brother. And I am always glad to see him to this day.
Grace,
That’s a wonderful story, and what a great memory of your brother. A definite knight-in-shining moment, for certain.
OMG, Alix. That’s the most romantic story. I hear the music in the background and see Sandra Bullock and Hugh Jackman in the Gatwik airport as they run toward each other. What a sweet memory. I’ll have to think about my favorite.
I don’t know if I ran or heard music, Marley, but I can remember standing bleary-eyed at 5am in the airport, almost unable to contain myself when I saw that familiar face appear.
So now I’ve spilled mine, you have to come back with yours – or if you’re stumped, I want to hear what it would be, and if it would include Hugh Jackman.
What a romantic experience. It has brought to mind a similar experience. When I was 18, I moved to Germany with my family. I was reluctant to go and dissapointed because the waiting list to get into school and the lack of work for a Colonel’s daughter. The first six months were hard, my very good friend, now my husband wrote me every day, and of course I wrote back. During that long distance friendship, we discovered that our feelings for one another had grown, and started talking on the phone.
One day he called and told me he wanted to send me a plane ticket because his long distance phone bill was more than the price of a ticket. (Ever practical, my husband.) I went to my father and he agreed to let me go home after three more months.
From the day he picked me up at the airport in a three piece suit, cowboy boots and his stetson hat, I’ve been his. That night he took me home to his house where he’d cut out daisy petals (they are my favorite flower) and created a beautiful paper path that led through the house to a wonderful wooden chest he built for me.
I smile to this day when I think of it, and all the love that went into building such a cherrished gift.
Laura,
Daisy petals and handmade chests? I love it!!
I have to say that after reading these moments, I’m beginning to sense a damsel-in-distress trend with the take-charge hero striding in to the rescue.
I have to say one of my most romantic moments happened when I was 6 months pregnant with my second child. My husband was renovating one of my dads rental properties to get ready to sell. Parking was a premium and our designated spots infront of the twonhouse were taken so I parked in someone else’s spot. Five minutes later, a tow truck appeared and stopped in front of my car I ran outside and stood between a great big burly tow truck driver and my front tires arguing with him and daring him to move me out of the way. I’m 5’2″ he was at least 6’4″. looking back I must have been quite a site. The next thing I knew my hubby was in front of me telling the great ape that if he touched on hair on my head, he’d lose a number of very important parts of his body, not to mention his teeth. Picture this in a spanish accent. “Jew toush wan hair on mi whifes hhead, and jore goengk to loose hall af jore teef”
Deborah,
Another take-charge hero! A great story. And of course, a foreign accent makes everything sexier.
One of the sweetest things I remember is after trying for a month to get me to go out, I agreed and we went somewhere for a drink. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, the lounge was virtually empty. DH, then boyfriend, had become familiar with songs I was singing professionally, one in particular was Anne Murray’s Could I Have this Dance (for the rest of my life).
He put quarters in the juke box, turned on that song and we danced in an empty lounge with the dance floor all to ourselves. Halfway through, he looked down at me with this incredulous expression and said, “Woman, I just about love you.” of course, he tried to take it back several times after that. That was a long time ago, so I was somewhat shocked when, on my birthday last week, a friend of mine told me that he stopped by and said to her, “I remember when I met her. She was beautiful and she’s still incredible.”
I’d love to have flowers or a present every now and then but when I think of these moments, suddenly they seem inconsequential.
I knew you’d come back, Marley, and with a touching and beautiful story!
It’s nice when our men tell us how they feel, but for some reason having them confess their feelings to someone else is so much more revealing.
I have to say all the moments today have been worthy of inclusion in any romance novel.
It didn’t happen on Valentine’s Day… I spend most of them with my husband out of town. In fact, we’ve only spent 4 together out of 23 years. Two where I traveled to where he was working.
I can’t even say that when he proposed it was the most romantic moment…considering that he’d broken up with me the previous minute (literally).
So the most romantic moment for us was when he finally got home after I got the call– even then, I had to remind him he hadn’t been here since he wanted to go visit the grandkids. LOL I told him he had one shot to get it right. It would never happen again.
He took me to the Melting Pot…one of the top favorites I have. But more than that, he’d made a reservation and everyone there knew I’d sold my first book. Flowers on the table, an engraved charm for my bracelet that HE actually chose. Royal treatment and lots of love. The hubby can be very caring if he’s nudged in the right direction. LOL
~~Angi
How sweet that he took the time to acknowledge such a big moment in your life. But I’m intrigued by the break-up followed immediately by the proposal. Now there’s a story, I’m thinking!
Well, I’ve been married for 35 years, and my husband does a thousand small things every day that make him my best friend in addition to my lover. There are so many romantic things we’ve done, but my most romantic story is the one about how we met.
It was a cool evening in October and I was scheduled to sing at a coffee house in the DC area. I had a litle bit of time between the day job and the gig so I took my copy of Michener’s Hawaii to dinner at a Lums Restaurant. I walked into the room and there he was — the man of my dreams.
I mean this was a completely Tony and Maria moment when the entire room faded out and it was just him and me. He told the guy he was having dinner with that he was going to marry me. Right then, before he’d even said one word to me.
We flirted across the room and he came over to ask me out to a local disco (it was the 1970s!). I told him I couldn’t go because of my gig, and I gave him directions to the coffee house, but when he turned around to go back to his booth I just knew he had no clue where this coffee house was located.
I got up, paid my bill, went to my car, cursed the fates that the man of my dreams had asked me to dance and I was otherwise engaged, and went off to my gig. About 20 minutes into the first set, in walks my husband-to-be with his friend.
It was at that point that I learned that his friend’s parents were members of the church that sponsored the coffee house where I was singing.
Coincidence? Or the Lord’s plan?
I know what Miz Miriam, the matchmaker in my novels would say.
That is what we call kismet, Hope!
The fates were definitely with you that night.
I’d love to know how many of us have used these moments in a work of fiction. Takers, anyone?
I love that, Alix. How romantic. We write this stuff all the time. Isn’t it nice when it happens in real life
What a lot of wonderful stories here. I think one of the sweetest for me was when hubby was just a boyfriend. On my birthday he blindfolded me, put me in a car, drove all around town to confuse me, then took me to Outback which was my favorite restaurant at the time where friends had gathered for a party. Very sweet. Another birthday, after we’d married, he sent me off for the weekend and when I came back he had taken the yucky carpet out of the living room and put down hardwood flooring. That was a sigh moment definitely. I hated that carpet.
My most romantic moment involves, of all things, a hammer and the man wasn’t even there.
Two weeks after I moved to Texas, I met a handsome cowboy. We met at a church we were both visiting for the first time, went out to dinner after morning service and out for ice cream after the evening service.
The next weekend when he dropped me off from our first official date he commented that I had nothing on the walls of my new ( barely 700 sq ft) apartment. I responded that you forget you don’t own things like hammers and nails until you live by yourself for the first time.
Monday afternoon I was literally dragging myself home from teaching middle school all day. It was a long, annoying day and I had a terrible headache. I climbed the stairs to my apartment and found a hammer with a red bow leaning against my door. No note. Just a bow.
We were married just over a year later.
OK, Anita. Installing a hardwood floor sits high on my list of romantic moments. My husband has installed enough of them over the years for me to know just how much blood, sweat, and cussing is involved.
Thinking about how that turned into a romantic moment for you is instructive when writing any hero. Sometimes it’s not the grand heroic gesture that sticks in our hearts and gives us that Awwwwww! moment. A hero doesn’t have to slay dragons. He just needs to be the guy who does that little something that makes our hearts pound faster.