Valentine’s Day is almost over.
I meant to say how much I love the simple act of acknowledging the day.
I meant to talk about how it seems that when we were little, the cards we gave to our classmates were so much bigger than the cards my girls bring home today. How much I loved coming home with my white paper sack decorated with red construction paper hearts and glitter. How I sat on my bed, emptied the sack, pored through the valentines.
In my family we’ve started making our cards. For days the girls sit at the kitchen table and make valentines after school. Em crosses off the names on her classmate list that her teacher sends home with each kid.
This morning the first thing I heard from both my girls was, Mom, did you make our cards yet?
I made them each a card with a red valentine doily and pink cut-out hearts on construction-paper springs. Jim We all got chocolate-dipped strawberries.
I think it’s silly that Valentine’s Day should be about couples. I heard someone on the radio this morning say that on Saint Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish, but on Saint Valentine’s Day, everyone can’t be a couple.
Valentine’s Day can be about a cut-out heart pasted onto a piece of paper. Making a phone call. Smiling, showing some love. To yourself, even.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Good night.
Hi,
it was lovely to read your post – to dive into the memoirs of family warmth – of the love that far exceeds all possible heating systems.
I would be happy to welcome you with the Valentine day, to wish you the best and I wholeheartedly do that in spite of the fact I don’t know what it is Valentine day (I have no personal experience and therefore cant relate it to my feelings (I live in Lithuania and we didn’t celebrate (didn’t knew) that day) However, that means nothing at all, because everyday is worthy celebrating – Hearty Hi enlightens every day and there is no need to wait foe any special day for to share our love and respect with all around.
Hi
Today and every when
Peace and love
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>on Saint Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish, but on Saint Valentine’s Day, everyone can’t be a couple.
Very good point! My main gripe with Valentine’s day is that it’s about one very specific type of love – possessive romantic love between couples. But there’s so much more to love than that – love for friends and family and so on. There are even a lot of different types of romantic love (I remember a lovely post on this over at Cafe Philos which is well worth checking out: Popular Culture and Love)
Perhaps we should start a campaign for Feb 14 2009 to be a Valentine’s day for every sort of love!
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Happy day to you, Tomas. I agree, every day is worth celebrating.
Lirone, one of the things I was thinking about recently is that as young kids, Valentine’s Day was always a different kind of celebration. The decorated shoeboxes with slits in the top or the paper bags, the handing out of valentines. I remember walking past each desk and dropping in a card. And then the class party. Yesterday I took cheese cubes and carrots to Em’s class to offset the cookies and cupcakes.
I guess because of our girls, I still associate the day to that whole excitement. I wonder what I’ll think about it when they grow up.
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Ybonesy – lovely post, and I agree with your point about valentines not being only about romantic love between couples ( that’s only a part of the love equation).
The nicest thing happened to me yesterday. As OLPC and LFB and I were paying up at the municipal gymn to do our exercises, a five year-old tow-headed boy came and offered each of us a valentine from a paper sack. The one he gave me had a chocolate heart pasted to the card; to recognize this young boy’s selfless generous act, I offered him the heart explaining meanwhile that I loved chocolate, but perhaps he might enjoy it more. “Thank you, lady” he said as he took it. “You’re my Valentine.” He smiled at us as we made our way upstairs. He made my day! Going up the stairs I read what was written inside the card. “Hi friend”, then in painful childish printing full of letter reversals and alteration between upper and lower case, “lOvE, IsABel”.
I had to laugh – this re-gift moved me so much with it’s transparent, guileless candour. G
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ybonesy, it’s fun to click on your hearts and see the handmade cards your family made. We didn’t do cards this year, but seeing the brilliant red of those primroses Liz brought home, really brightened my February.
I remember what a big deal Valentine’s Day was when I was a kid, too, exchanging handmade cards, and all the red, red, red (my favorite color back then), red frosting on cupcakes, red paper hearts. It was a lot of fun.
It seems to me romance can be about couples and about friends and family. It can be both. We don’t have to choose. If we do have a partner or someone we are dating, it’s fun to acknowledge the gift of the relationship. To stop all the busyness and take some time to tell them how much we love them. But it’s so much bigger than that, too.
I noticed yesterday that people generally were in pretty good moods wherever we ran into them. There was a different energy in the air.
I spent a lot of years as a single person, too. I used to try to spend the time with friends. Even if people were in couples, if they are real friends, they will open their circles and their hearts. The day is about love.
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Thanks, QM and G. I love your story, G, about the boy “re-gifting” Isabel’s valentine! How adorable. And to give up a piece of chocolate with it.
I remember when my youngest was in kindergarten, that Valentine’s Day the mother of one her classmates called to say that Jake had something he wanted to drop by. We had finished eating dinner and said, Sure, come on by. They drove up, got out of the car, and here comes Jake walking up the driveway with a bouquet of flowers, a teddy bear, and a box of chocolate. It was the biggest surprise ever. We thought it was adorable, but Em did not. She was so embarrassed.
After that night, Em would not let us talk about Jake. She stopped playing with him and to this day she avoids him when she sees him at school.
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QM, I bet those primroses were a bright spot in February. Are those perennials? If so, that will be a nice reminder, too, next spring of this Valentine’s Day.
lirone, thanks for that link to Cafe Philos’ piece on love. I remember reading that back when he first wrote it. I read it again and remembered how I used to have conversations with friends about “love” versus “in love.” It seemed like we spent hours talking about the differences, were there two kinds of love, etc. We were teenagers or young adults, and we earnestly wanted to understand the feelings that we had at that time.
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ybonesy, yes, the primroses are perennials, and one of the first flowers to bloom in Spring. Even though it’s still sub-zero here with the windchills, it reminds me that Spring is on the way. Maybe we can plant them in our little garden.
So sad about Em and Jake. I bet she broke his little heart. Ah, unrequited love. It’s a hard one to get over. I still remember all of my elementary school loves. Somehow, after 50, I feel like I get a fresh start at love. And most days, I feel like a kid again.
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I’d forgotten those doilies…and the bags we made in school to hold our valentines.
The cards are precious yb. What a wonderful memory you’ve created for your girls.
My Husband gave me a card that read “We have a pretty unusual relationship” … ” I’m pretty”…”you’re unusual”
I’m still laughing 😉
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