26 Feb 2026
This month, Ruth reflects on love in all its forms – from family and friendship to the quiet gestures that hold a life together.
Being born on February 14th, every year Valentine’s Day feels like mine. This time, it came with steam, stone tiles and a flight to Hungary.
Budapest in February carries a beautifully theatrical romance, the grand buildings looming over the Danube and the air so cold it stings your cheeks. To celebrate turning thirty-nine, my best friend and I did what felt entirely appropriate: we wrapped ourselves in oversized towels and slid into the mineral pools of a grand indoor spa.
Around us, couples leaned into each other in the way people do on Valentine’s Day. There were quiet whispers and phones balanced carefully for photographs. The room was full of love stories, and I felt deeply content in my own.
Sipping our bright pink rose lemonades, we leaned back against the smooth stone and began laughing about something ridiculous. It escalated, as these things do, until we were wiping our eyes and attracting mild disapproval from the lovers beside us attempting a serene selfie. Floating there, I contemplated how much love exists in my life, without fanfare.
Outside, we wandered the city streets wrapped in scarves, our conversation moving easily between memories and plans and half-formed thoughts about the future. Should I quit my job? What do you think this text means? Should we stop for a cocktail? As I move through this year before forty, I’ve become more aware of the quiet architecture of love in my life.
Throughout the day, my phone lit up with messages from home. My friends sent voice notes filled with laughter and silly references. My siblings sent offensive memes and personal insults, the ultimate expression of love. My mother had texted first thing that morning, as she always does on my birthday, asking what the weather was like and whether I’d slept well. Her consistency is one of the steadiest things I know. Her love is infrastructural. It steadies your nervous system and gives you somewhere to land.
I received long messages of love from my best friends, the girls I grew up with in Ireland, now living on the other of the world in Australia. Their lives are louder than mine, filled with the beautiful chaos of children. They send me photos of little ones dressed for their first day at school; I send back pictures of the fancy Martini I’m having before dinner. Our lives have different rhythms, yet when we speak, the years fold away. The girls we were at fourteen still exist somewhere between us. They knew me before career paths and city moves. I knew them before motherhood reshaped their days.
Back in St Albans, there is love in smaller gestures that barely registers as extraordinary every day. A neighbour who takes care of my dog when I travel, sending photos of him curled up on their sofa as if he belongs there. The quiet trust of handing over your keys. A colleague who meets your eye across a table when a conversation becomes tense and reminds you, without words, that you are not alone in the room. A friend who senses something in your voice and calls before you’ve even realised you need it.
By the time we sat down to dinner, Valentine’s Day was in full swing. The room glowed warmly and a woman in a red silk dress perched on a stool and sang Ed Sheeran songs in a whisper.
My friend and I ordered a bottle of Hungarian wine we couldn’t pronounce and an array of dishes we had no idea how to describe. We sat in the middle of all the romance, talking and laughing until the tables slowly emptied around us.
We walked back through the sharp night air, paper-wrapped chimney cake warming our hands. The city was dark and gold. I felt completely at ease.
On Valentine’s Day, in a city far from home, I acknowledged that love has never been scarce in my life. It has arrived through family, through friendship, through small acts of care repeated over years. It has travelled across continents. It has shown up in voice notes and shared laughter and someone feeding the dog while I’m away.
This birthday, I didn’t make a wish. I simply felt surrounded.
I felt deeply loved. And deeply lucky.
