Valentine’s Day has never been a big thing in my life. Every year, my school would do Valentine’s gift-giving, where everyone brought a gift for each person in the class. After elementary school, I carried on that tradition myself and did that throughout middle school and high school. Of course, I didn’t get everyone a gift, only those I felt close to.

Normally, on Valentine’s Day, couples would go out and spend their time together. There are many things people can do for Valentine’s Day, however, with quarantine, those options have decreased.

This year is going to be very different for me in more ways than one. This is the first time that I will be together with someone on Valentine’s Day. Now I have one person to think about and I want to be able to do something nice for them. With quarantine, that turns out to be more difficult than I had thought.

Even though there is still a concern around COVID-19, my significant other and I plan to safely meet up and spend the part of the day together. The planning for this was difficult seeing that they are quarantining in San Francisco and I’m in Sunnyvale.

My significant other and I spend most of our time together on video calls so we can at least talk and spend some time together. With the current situation, video calls and texting are the main ways we can communicate and it has become a large part of our relationship. Due to the majority of our relationship being digital, I feel that the time we spend in person is more important than it would have been in a pre-quarantine relationship.

With limited things to do and little time to spend together, I want to find something I can do for them that is special and allows for us to be together. They have already planned to come down to Sunnyvale to see me and I decided I could use that to make a plan. I want to go somewhere where we can just sit outside and be together, so I chose to find a park close by that likely will not be filled with a lot of people. I also want to give them a gift that was uniquely us and special, but I’m not creative so I got her an engraved ring.

Valentine’s Day has always been an interesting day for me. I never really treated the day as a day for relationships, but more for friendships. To me now, there is more meaning to this day than I usually have had in the past. I now think of Valentine’s Day as a day to show love and affection for that important person in my life.