I think Valentine’s Day is Hallmark-created BS, but as I write that I’m staring at a floral arrangement The Husband picked up for me yesterday because he knows that even though I don’t like fake holidays, I do like flowers. Things don’t have to make sense to be true.

What does it mean to fall in love, anyway? When I was younger, I imagined it was like a Disney movie: fast and sudden, done within a day. Kids must still think this, as Little Brother came home yesterday with a report of two boys in his class falling in love with the same girl and one of them being dumped with the other accepted in the span of six hours. That’s a lot of love for a Tuesday.

Real love, for me, was less dramatic–less falling, and more being carried, gently, to a safe person and place. Quiet assurance instead of high and low emotional flare-ups. Excitement that grew into certainty. These days, it looks like a big-ass pile of flowers even though I said that the orthotics I have to buy so I can keep running (another missed neck lift opportunity) could be my present. Less falling, more staying.

But it is still a fall, of sorts. A daily trust fall, a belief that what brought and keeps us together is strong enough to hold through sibling fights and neurological meltdowns and people who don’t push their chair back under the table. Sturdy enough for us to stick our landings, or at least support us when we stumble into them.

The boys went with friends to an indoor skydiving venue this weekend, and I told them that when I was a teenager, I went bungee jumping. Thrice. That was much more dangerous and dumb than the fearsome activity I signed waivers for with their name at the top, promising I wouldn’t sue if The Worst happened. So they suited up and listened to the instructions and entered the chamber, and I stood outside and watched.

The Kid looked back at me with The Face: the one that says the tears are coming and he wants to bolt. He was basically locked into the space shuttle, past the point of no return, and I had to shrug–which I once read is the beginning of wisdom–and maybe that’s true because when you don’t have an out, you have to fall. The two adult strangers in the kids’ group returned from their flights and I watched, but couldn’t hear, as TK asked them questions and saw as they reassured him. LB went a couple of people before his brother and fell right away into the chamber, a grin plastered across his air-blasted face. He was in heaven.

At the entry point, TK was in the opposite location. He hovered at the doorway, turned back a couple of times. The group watching began to cheer him on. I shot him a thumbs-up and a nod, and I watched that moment occur when he ran out of other choices and just…fell. Which doesn’t matter at all, once you’re there–how you got there doesn’t determine how you fly, only if you do, and he did. Arms and legs splayed every-which direction, but he did it, to cheers. And we all made it home alive.

I just watched the video of both boys flying. It’s set to music and tells a seamless story (at least, after the part where TK initially tries to escape). So many stories are like that–a score in the background, edits made to show only the “good” parts. The falling, though–that’s the thing. Whether thrilling, or just like an exhale of breath, prolonged with stops and starts, messy rather than pretty–the falling may just be a step forward, this beginning that makes everything after it different.