14 Valentine's that Remain Close to my Heart

I invite you to celebrate some different ways in which we express and receive love, in 14 Valentine’s that Remain Close to my Heart, my own love letter to the holiday we celebrate on February 14.

14 Valentine's That Remain Close to My Heart

Christmases past make me think of my father standing on a ladder, cutting corners by zig-zagging the pre-LED lights back and forth on only the forward-facing side of the ten-foot Douglas fir. And my mother, bracing the ladder below, making him take them all down and start over, going round and round clockwise, taking care not to leave any back branches bare of colored bulbs. Same Advent drama, year after year, and in the end, same glorious, trimmed tree.

Valentine’s Days past do not call to mind any such ritual, however. Apart from those 15 years of marriage when I received, without surprise but still with appreciation, one dozen coral roses on February 14, it’s been different every year. I am an unblushing opportunist on this day of doily hearts and boxed chocolates. Depending on circumstances,  and the people who happen to populate my little off-axis world at the time, I reinvent the meaning of love each year to suit the situation. I make the throbbing best of it, with or without the male protagonist. In fact—not to sour the sweet—-but some of my best Valentine’s Days have been spent loving friends, not lovers. Which is a good thing to remember as I face Cupid’s arrow this month as a single mother in her mid-fifties. 

Here are fourteen stand-out Valentine’s Day recollections, not “sensual”  but “scent-ual” experiences all, twinkling GIFs in my ever-growing text thread of memory, leaving behind a trail of heart-eyed smiley emojis.

1.  As a teen, receiving a single truffle heart from Teuscher Chocolatier in Rockefeller Center, in a keepsake box from my first man, Daddy. I have probably eaten a heart-shaped bathtub full of chocolates since then, but that one, wrapped up all on its own, from one father to one daughter, is the one I remember the most

2.  Also as a teen, in the kitchen with mom, unmolding individual coeur à la crème crustless cheesecakes from French porcelain heart-shaped molds, then spooning strawberries on top. We used the wedding china and the real silverware that Valentine’s night I’m sure. The texture, I recall clearly, more like cottage cheese than New York cheesecake, felt continental to my teenage tongue. And now this strained dessert, involving cheesecloth and imported custard cups, has come to symbolize the love and creativity my mother has always put into getting dinner on the family table for fifty-eight years of marriage.

3. As an eight-year-old, at the dining room table, addressing small envelopes enclosing Peanuts valentines to my classmates in Miss MacIntosh’s third grade homeroom, then sealing them with heart stickers. There was something about working in miniature this way—small hands, small cards—that felt just right. The anticipation of giving each one out, then getting 25 odd ones in return, of spreading the love and having it returned exponentially to my class cubby, well it’s up there with waiting for Santa, or the first day of summer vacation.

4. As a freshman in college, obsessed with a senior who was, in turn, obsessed with Dylan, I took a skein of blue yarn and went at his dorm room, tangling it up in blue, from ceiling light fixture to dirty tube sock under the bed. He didn’t know what to make of it, or of me, but I remember how happy it made me while doing it.

5. In my early twenties, showing up on my boyfriend’s doorstep—La Petite Coquette— in only black bra, garters and fishnets, to which I’d rigged pink bows, while holding a giant heart of Russell Stover caramels, bigger than his Greenwich Village studio apartment. I was ravished. 

6.  In my late twenties I started sending Valentines to friends and family by way of Loveland, Colorado, where volunteers would intercept each envelope and postmark it with a Valentine verse. My valentines still go this circuitous route as volunteers are still ready with the red stamp to add an original stanza every year like: 

St. Valentine started the trend —

A special day to reach out to friends

Loveland, Colorado picked up the cue,

Sending heart-felt messages to you.

7. As a new mother, my thoughtful sister-in-law gifted my then husband and I  with a certificate for a dinner out. Our toddler son sucked buttered linguine and tugged at mylar balloons tied on the backs of every chair.  

8. With the birth of our second son, my then husband presented me with a golden locket holding photographs he’d hand-colored of our boys, posed in chubby-cheek profile. Here they were, finally birthed at thirty-eight and forty-two, after years of false starts and fertility treatments, twin hearts facing one another, now nestled against my breast bone. Not made of pure gold, but gold tone instead, the locket’s surface has dulled with wear, but not the contents. 

9. As PTA mom at a Valentine’s Day Bake Sale, standing behind a bridge table, in heart-shaped deely boppers and smeared to my elbows in pink frosting, selling all those damn cupcakes to second-graders waving dollar bills in my face. I remember my toddler sat beside me on a folding chair, well-behaved for hours, content or catatonic, through a patina of rainbow sprinkles. That was a good day, standing shoulder to shoulder with parents who had kids in my son’s class,  selling silk roses that would go home in backpacks, then be presented to other mothers that night

10. As a forty-four-year-old at the dining room table, experiencing deja-vu with my first-grader, as we sat addressing Snoopy valentines to all his classmates in Ms. Lombelino’s first-grade classroom. Among other things, I remember thinking, this is what I’m meant to do with my life.  

11. As a fifty-year-old divorcee, when both sons come home from their school bake sales with gifts for their first sweetheart: a Valentine’s mug and a duck plush which still sits on the dashboard of the KIA. That duck has fallen to the floorboard and been returned to the dash too many stoplights to count

12. As a fifty-one-year-old, redeeming a soon-to-expire gift certificate to a storefront massage parlour, for the best deep tissue kneading of my lifetime. My then boyfriend, and still friend, gave me the voucher because he knew he’d never use it himself. I still meet up with this man at white elephants and book fairs, where we swap stories on raising teens. I remember leaving that spa limp all over, in such a good way.

13. As a fifty-three-year-old, dabbing my pulse points with a  scented oil that my next boyfriend, and also still a friend, had blended for us at a legendary fragrance shop in lower Manhattan. Based on his description of our personalities, the perfumer mixed up a unisex roll-on that really did suit us both. That perfume lingers in my olfactory receptors, and this man and I, both foodies, swap recipes and alert each other to good deals on avocados today. 

14. At 54, this upcoming Valentine’s Day is already making sweet-smelling memories. They say the pre-war bathtub is the poor woman’s spa. A Google search didn’t pull up this expression, so I must have invented it.  I’ve been mixing up batches of bath bliss for those I love, and have already started hand-delivering my bath salts. My dermatologist seemed startled, then smiled: “You know I hate Valentine’s Day.”

I get it. For some, it’s a loaded day of filled chocolates and full of regrets. For a spate in my twenties it was that for me, too. But this year, just like these thirteen heart days which precede it, I’m not biting into Valentine’s Day and returning it to the box, disappointed.  I love this day. A time when we fully experience the well of a love which surrounds us. With luck and a little focused attention, we carry this goodwill into the spring. But not the cynics, who believe this holiday is confined to the borders of a romantic love which eludes them, nor the forgetful, for whom this loving feeling only lasts until midnight on the fourteenth day of February, until the tree comes down in their hearts. I bought a two-foot living tree with a root ball this past Christmas. I’m not forgetting this year. My dermatologist’s surprised smile helps me remember.