The Good Lord willing, I will be spending Valentine’s Day weekend with two of my favorite people in the whole world — the one I married, and the one I gave birth to. I’m excited for our plans and for the family reunion, but I’ve also been thinking about Valentine’s Day in an odd past/present/future kind of way.
Remember when you were a school kid and you had to buy Valentines for the whole class, so that everyone felt included?
That may have been the last time some of us were treated equally. As we got older and more discerning — or maybe it was discriminating — we would leave out the weird kid (or maybe we were the weird kid).
Valentine’s Day for school kids was a chance to take a break from the regular classroom worries and replace it with the worries of (un)popularity.
Then we grew up even more, and the stakes from this made-up holiday changed.
Some people use the day to profess their love (or at least like) for someone, others use it to pamper themselves, and still others use the day to seek revenge on partners from the past for their sins, both real and imagined. There are plenty of places willing to send dead flowers to your ex, if you have the money — and the immaturity.
And while progressive people like to keep moving forward, if there’s one thing we should snatch from our past, it is giving a little Valentine to people around us.
Valentine’s Day can be equally anxiety-producing for those both romantically coupled and uncoupled, so I say we look at this day in a different light, especially this year.
One reason is our Christmas season of Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward All, lasted a New York second.
A combination of all kinds of economic concerns by those who may be unemployed, or underemployed, just as the time arrived to go all-out for presents, added to the cluster-chaos of impeachment hearings, a near-war with Iran, impeachment trial-as-theater, and last week’s messy ending of the Iowa caucuses (do we even care who won?) made for a bad taste in the first month and a half of this year. Let’s face it — we had already soured on the season of good cheer before the tree went out with the trash.
So, time to regroup. Maybe we can summon some good feelings around Cupid, find a few more bouquets and a lot fewer brickbats.
You know how around Christmas time you’re supposed to remember all the people who made your life easier throughout the year?
Can we throw a few candy hearts their way?
The mail carrier who makes sure to put your packages in the door, trudges up your (unshoveled) stairs, cheerfully takes your stamped mail so you don’t have to go hunting for a mailbox — that person deserves a Valentine, maybe a coffee gift card. (And for you to shovel your stairs.)
Your kid’s teacher probably gets more Best Teacher coffee cups, and maybe even coffee gift cards, than one can shake a stick at. How about knocking off a few needed items from their school list? Many people think about doing that at the beginning of the school year, and some even add more around Christmas. But those supplies start to run out the later the school year gets, and far too many teachers dip into their own pockets for what they need. Ask a teacher, and pay a Valentine’s visit to the big box store of your choice.
Of course there are so many people who make our lives easier, and sometimes we don’t realize it, because we don’t know them, or we’ve come to take them for granted: the neighbor with the snowblower, who doesn’t mind going all the way up the block; the one who shovels the elderly neighbors’ stairs and brings the trash barrels down the driveway and back; the stranger who helps you with your groceries when they see you struggling; the one who gives you quarters for the meter when you don’t have change, or the anonymous one who feeds your meter because it’s running out and the meter maid is a few steps away; the person who paid for your coffee because you let them in front of you in the awkward drive-through with two pathways in. Sometimes the only Valentine we can give them is the verbal one of “thank you.”
Then there are other little Valentines we can give, and it doesn’t cost much more than our time.
The lonely neighbor who needs someone to talk to? A nice phone chat — even if it’s 10-15 minutes of you listening to a litany of aches and pains — may do wonders for someone who spends too much time alone, and feels unloved and unwanted.
Text a heart to someone you haven’t talked to in awhile and say you’re thinking about them, and hope they’re having a good day.
Some of us have friends we dearly love, but can’t find the time for a cup of coffee together, much less a lunch or dinner date. As “connected” as we try to be, liking their posts on social media just isn’t as intimate as saying, “hey, I miss you.” And making the effort to pull out your calendars and committing to a date, even if it’s weeks (or sometimes months) away.
This weekend can mean everything, or nothing, depending on who you have in your life right now. We can be annoyed, chagrined, anxious, or excited. We can be disappointed, or we can ignore the whole absurdity of pressure to be romantic.
But when the year starts off as badly as this one, some of us look for any reason to be hopeful. There are plenty of dark clouds ahead. Let’s take a day or two to look for some silver linings.
