Valentine’s Day
For many years, I studiously ignored Valentine’s Day. This began, I think, in the days of the conscientious objector. So idealistic I was, or so I thought, in the seventies when I was in my twenties. I rejected such pro forma declarations of love, requisite on a given day, and spurred by the Hallmark conglomerate. Think of all the days-before-the-day, when my husband was spared the angst of “Oh-My-God-I’ve-got-to-get-her-something”. (I say “husband’ because I think there was only one Valentine’s Day in my life when I had a boyfriend who had not yet turned into a husband.) A rejection of Valentine's Day now has a name; it is called "Anti-Valentine's Day". It bears a cynical tone and carries the freight of bitterness--a far cry from the lofty notion that love is something more than chocolate, cards and reservations.
As a child, I made valentines. That was before love became consciously pursued or a commodity that could be lost. They were joyously lacy, sticky red and gloriously, innocently conventional. To me, they were beautiful. I can’t remember who they were for: It mattered not. What was important was that there was love in my life and I was making them. I reveled in the paper lace, the thrilling mastery of cutting a heart shape, the glue, the scraps falling on the floor—the glorious mess of it all! With young-wise dignity, I knew that the purpose was to release these masterpieces into the hands of others. I flung myself into the task with the naïve certainty that someone would be happy when they saw it.
I made one adult valentine card. It was 38 years ago. It had no lace, but it had layers of hearts in different hues, one layer peeling back to reveal the next one underneath. Within these layers, I wrote my poem. It was read, I was thanked, it was tossed, and that was that. I never made another one. I lived a loving life, but that was that.
Many years later, I learned to write love poems again. I understood better what there was to say. Some are joyous, some sad. But the saddest love poems are the ones unsent.
Perhaps the measure of a Valentine's worth is not found in the receiver's response or reaction to it (since we are often disappointed by our expectations of others), but rather, it is found within the giver himself/herself.
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