My birth date is Feb. 14 and one Valentine's Day many years ago, a cute teenage girl named Shirley held my hand and told me she loved me. She's spent every day since then showing me what love means and living it with me.

First and foremost our love has meant being best friends, sharing interests and intimacies, enjoying each other's company and companionship.

It's complete trust, openness, honesty, a deep emotional connection, and feeling always free to be yourself. It's about being passionate and patient, silly moments and sacred commitments, serious conversations and loud laughs at life's absurdities.

Love, we've found, means having a selective memory, forgetting our foibles and forgiving our failures. We've learned to give generously, take graciously and share constantly. We've found that it really is for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, and ever sweeter as it grows.

Our love is evident in the family we made, the memories we treasure and the side-by-side journey we take every day.

And - lucky me - she still holds my hand and tells me she loves me!

- Richard Duncan, a reader in Salem