Many years ago, when I was a very young Scout, I moved to Portland, Oregon, from California. As it so happens, I was moving to Portland because I was in love. And while there were a lot of reasons why this would become one of the better decisions I’ve made in my life, that wasn’t how I felt just yet, and I couldn’t help but feel a slight tug from the old as I moved forward into the new.

When I woke up the next afternoon, however, after driving through the night, all alone in what would become my bedroom, but wasn’t yet, I saw a notation on the calendar for the first day of Spring…and for International Scouts Day. I don’t know if it was intended to be more than a sweet notation in the margins of life, but I took it and ran with it!

After all, who wouldn’t want their own holiday?? And an international one, no less?!

---

---

Flash forward to 2020, the year of our lord Covid, and an amazing man named Tal—the yet-to-be-named Mr. Scout!—was taking multiple flights, and crossing oceans over hours upon hours of travel, to live with me in Tokyo. He checked in as often as he could, as we both worried about him getting through his transit points not only safely, but without being detained or returned to the place from whence he had come. We didn’t know it yet, but our fears were very real…as confirmed when Japan closed its borders only days later.

We had been dating very long-distance for a couple of years, but now we were engaged, and filled with wide-eyed anticipation of everything we had planned for our lives ahead. Almost all of it would need to be put on hold, as the not-so novel coronavirus left wedding dates and pretty much everything else up in the air…but for now we had each other, and that was all that mattered.

---

While it continues to be the only thing that matters, there was also one. little. thing. written neatly on the calendar for the day he arrived: International Tal Day. And what better way to acknowledge all of the things, both big and small, that people do for us each and every day: give them their own special holiday, each year striving to convey to them, in our own ways both big and small, how much everything they do affects our lives.

So: mark the date on your calendar, and then make a card or bake some silly star cookies or just take a tiny moment of time out of your busy day each year to tell someone—anyone—just how much it means for them to be a part of your life. Trust me: you will never look back and regret the kind things you did do.

---

If you would permit me to end by paraphrasing the much more eloquent T.S. Eliot, this is a dedication for others to read, טל היפה שלי. These are private words addressed to you in public. ❤︎