The first time I realized Valentine’s Day was supposed to involve gifts, I was twenty-seven.  Where I grew up, no one celebrated holidays, let alone Valentine’s Day and for some reason in college, I never dated boys who got around to it, so I didn’t really care until one February day, one of my girlfriends called me and said, “What is your husband doing for you for Valentine’s Day?”  I peeked into the living room. 

            “What are we doing for Valentine’s Day?” 

            He kind of waved. “Basketball,” he said.

            I told her.  She said, “Don’t stand for it!”

            “What should I ask for?” 

            “Chocolate. Flowers. Dinner out.”

            I went back into the living room.  “Honey,” I said, he was kind of sprawled the way men do when they won’t have to move for months.  Chili and turkey drumsticks and Budweiser will be brought to them. “I’m going to need chocolate, flowers and sushi for Valentine’s Day.” 

            He waved royally at the door.  “Well, go get ‘em,” he said. 

            I put my baby girl on my back in her little blue back pack and took off for the liquor store at the end of the street.  We lived in Van Nuys in a seedy neighborhood.  I bought a box of chocolate and some slightly droopy red roses and when I got home, baby girl and I each had a chocolate, and we got her dad up and moving and he took us out for sushi. 

            I like remembering that when I think of A Room of Her Own.  Because the princess model is dead.  You cannot sleep for a hundred years and be wakened by your prince to castle and life. 

            Sometimes you are given a gift.  But don’t wait for those gifts.  If you really want to take a journey, don’t stand on the dock, build a boat. 

            A Room of Her Own is for Mrs. Sees who decided to make her own chocolate.  It’s for Margaret Thatcher who didn’t wait for a man to change her country.  It’s for Mary Johnson and Meredith Hall, Summer Wood and Barbara Johnson.   It’s for every woman out there who is willing to take the audacious act of claiming to be not only a writer, but an author.  Who is willing to claim that she deserves a room of her own to perform acts of the intellect and the imagination.  Who believes in her own creative power.  Who can pick up the baby and walk into her own destiny and future. 

            Sleeping Beauty waited for her prince.  We wait for no one.  We pick up our pen and begin to write.  We connect with other women in a space that is both sacred and alive at Ghost Ranch and we apply for the Gift of Freedom, for NEA’s, for all the awards and prizes and reviews that have been handed out to men for centuries, we do not wait, we step forward. 

            So I invite all women writers to participate in 2012 in the audacious act of applying for the Gift of Freedom.  And I invite all of you on Valentine’s Day to ask the universe for the day you want, the day that would make you feel loved and then to make it happen.

Kate Gale, Ph.D.