WHAT makes a Valentine?s Day? Is it the day or the drama? The place or the package? The music and the mood, or the food and the fantasy?

Or is February 14 only what they tell us it should be?love, romance, and a pledge of forever tied to a bouquet of red roses and a box of candy?

Every year as February sneaks up on us, we pull ourselves together, scoff and ask the same questions. And yet each year we fall. We fall for the strains of love songs, the fragrance of flowers, the sparkle of jewelry, and the delights of the heart, all nicely packaged by the merchants and offered to us to long for.

We fall in love, or we fall for love?it doesn?t matter really. It?s Valentine?s Day. We celebrate?Filipinos always do. And for many reasons and in many ways, we live Valentine?s Day in moments. In the small caresses. A quick kiss on the cheek. An almost impeceptible squeeze of a quivering hand held tightly in an equally cold hand. The look of love?in awe or anxiety, in wonder or in worry.

It?s Valentine?s Day on a park bench at past five in the afternoon where a couple shares a snack of turon and palamig on their way home from work?as they have been doing each day. Emil Aquino Sarmiento