I spent yesterday making mini key lime pie layer cakes, not because it was Valentine’s Day but because it is a three day weekend and I wanted lots of time for all the components and construction of these cakes which have been occupying my mind for the last month. Rose spent time installing a new shade for the deck door – one that, unlike the old one, is opaque, so that Scout can’t see the shapes of the cat or the horses through the translucent shade and therefore is less likely to launch himself at the door. Both projects have been in a state of “we’ll get to this soon,” so there was a gift-ish element of clearing the floor and table space that have been housing boxes and tools and ingredients in ready mode for some weeks. But mostly, it was just any old weekend day.

I’d say this is what Valentine’s looks like after more than 25 years, but it’s what Valentine’s has always looked like for us. We used to exchange cards, and sometimes we go out to dinner. Once I received beautiful tropical flowers at my office on February 13th with no card, and when my coworkers asked who they were from I said “I hope they are from Rose!” because it was so unlike us I thought maybe they had been misdelivered.

I met Rose at the farm where she kept her horse. I was there for an evening riding lesson. She was talking to one of the other students in my class by one of the barns, and the friend introduced us by saying “This is Rose – she’s Michael’s sister-in-law.” I was confused by this, since Linda – the woman whose family ran the farm and who taught the lessons – was married to a Michael, and I thought “Wouldn’t it be easier to say ‘Rose is Linda’s sister’?” It turned out there was another Michael, who was taking a husband class – not a class in how to be a husband, I mean, but a riding class for husbands of boarders and students at the farm. I was moderately disappointed to learn that the sister-in-law part happened because Rose was married to this Michael’s brother. So ours was not a love story that started right away.

Our riding instructor decided that a good way for us all to get out to horse shows the next spring was to buddy up with another rider with a horse at the same level so that we could have someone to show with. I remembered that Rose’s mare was, like my mare, somewhere down at the pre-green level of total beginner, and I asked for her phone number. Before I could call her, she drove up one day when I was at the farm. As she got out of her car I said “Just the woman I’ve been looking for!”

We did take our mares to shows together, and over the next three years we talked on the phone (a LOT), and we drove to the Eastern Shore to look at horses with Rose’s sister. We became friends. Friends through my last non-relationship with a guy I wasn’t quite dating, friends through starting a business together, friends through the end of Rose’s marriage, friends through buying more horses, friends through both of us realizing that something more was going on between us.

I can remember with great clarity a lot of individual moments from the whole history of our relationship: some romantic, some contentious, some funny, some heartbreaking. I couldn’t pull out a solid memory of a single Valentine’s Day (except the last time we went out to Valentine’s dinner – we came from two different places and managed to show up wearing matching outfits, right down to the shoes), but this morning I took the trash down the icy driveway, and while I’m writing this, Rose is filling the water troughs. Sometimes the best love language is to do the thing that needs to be done that the other person doesn’t feel like doing.

I don’t want to make too much of a cake metaphor, but I’m going to anyway. This particular cake has a lot of layers, and each one of them is made up of something different. It requires a lot more preparation and a lot more following of someone else’s directions than I care for. Making each component well is as critical as fitting them all together. Taking the time to make sure the whole thing holds together is a final step that’s well worth doing. And in the end, it’s both beautiful and delicious. Well, you get the idea.

Relationships are hard, and complicated. This doesn’t have anything to do with cake; it’s just true. Sometimes we forget to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and sometimes we remember to let it slide when each of us is at our absolute worst. After a lot of years, most of the relationship is in the day to day. Sometimes we remind me of the dogs, and the way they reach out with a paw to us or each other, just to make sure we’re still near. One thing I can still say: just the woman I was looking for.