My funny Valentine.

Society celebrates young love, but there's a special holiness in love that's lasted over the years.

Good Pope John blessed my parents marriage. Not at St. Peter's, of course, but at St. Leo's, as in St. Leo's in Corona, New York. Well, sort of at St. Leo's. My parents, like many Catholics of that time, sent off a request for the Holy Father's apostolic blessing on their marriage in 1961. They got the blessing, which came in the tangible form of an official-looking document affixed to a nice wooden plaque.

The plaque isn't in such good shape now. The parchment of the actual blessing was covered in plastic, which is now fraying a bit and peeling. The wood is worn in a few spots. A couple of the edges are chipped off. Taped near the top are two name badges from their honeymoon at Honeymoon Haven in Pennsylvania.

My parents were great romantics, the kind we don't often hear much about now on Valentine's Day or other times.

Certainly there's much to celebrate when it comes to young love and all the wonder of discovery when you're a newly-wed or fleshly engaged. But there's a special holiness, I think, in love that's lasted over the years. I mean the kind of love that's been tried by time, challenged by children, or darkened by death. Love that shines amid the ordinary and extraordinary, literally in the good times and the bad.

My parents taught me many things, of course, but I wonder if they ever realized how much they taught me about love.

They adored each other. He treated her as if she were the greatest treasure a man could have, and she showed him that he was the best thing to ever happen to her. They laughed a lot and were always affectionate with each other. They held hands all the time, even after 20 years of marriage.

That's not to say that there weren't fights. There certainly were, and some explosive ones, too, the kind that came close to realizing the stereotypes of Irish-Italian unions.

I wonder now if I'm aware of being a good model for my children. I wonder if any of my peers think about this, too. Most of us in the mid 30s and early 40s age group are often struggling to balance the demands of jobs and rearing young children. And so it isn't always easy to find time for date nights with your spouse or quiet time that doesn't involve sorting laundry, cleaning dishes, or paying bills. Maybe that's the point.

For my parents, love wasn't something bottled up and uncorked once the kids went to bed or after they left us home with a sitter. It was shared and celebrated day by day through the grace of God that slipped in amid changing diapers, helping with homework, and listening patiently to all the real and imagined grade-school traumas. And late at night, in that fuzzy state right before drifting off to dream, I would hear them laughing.

At the newspaper where I work we take photos of couples celebrating their 50th or longer anniversaries. We place them in the middle of the features section, not prominently but not out of the way either.

One recent couple has taken residence in a small corner of my heart. I watched from the lobby as they came in one day. She was in a wheelchair, and he was stooped over and limping badly as he struggled to push her up from the street. They were both quite old.

He was wearing his Sunday best from Sundays of long ago. His suit coat was worn, his tie didn't match his shirt, and his shoes looked as if they'd been dragged through gravel. He had a few stout tufts of white hair that stuck out every which way under his crumpled fedora.

She was thin, almost bony. Her dress probably was fashionable 40 years ago. Her few pieces of jewelry seemed dull, although it looked as if she had just come from the beauty shop.

As he pushed her along the way into the building, he leaned over and whispered something. Whatever he said made her smile like a schoolgirl.

They were still smiling by the time they caught up to me to ask how to get to the photo studio. I told them, and then I said, brilliantly: "Getting your anniversary picture taken?" He straightened up until he was about half a head taller than me and proudly thundered: "Yes, sir. Been married to this lovely gal for 60 years." She actually blushed and then said: "Ain't been no honeymoon all the time, but the good Lord surely been good to us."

About 10 minutes later they made their way back through the lobby. As I was walking out past them, he leaned over and told me that he was looking forward to "the next 60 years with my best gal." She looked up at him and patted his hand.

Then she beckoned him down, close to her face, and kissed him on the cheek.

As they moved away from the building, she in her wheelchair and he stooped over and limping badly, they giggled.

TOM MULLEN, an assistant news editor of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia and a journalism instructor at the University of Richmond.