Hey young lovers wherever you are, Happy Valentine’s Day. Since it is a saint day ofthe patron saint of greeting-card manufacturers among other things, I will spend my day in devotional prayer. Which is a true statement, if by “devotional prayer” I mean relaxing with my cutie patootie [can’t get the image file to show his cuteness, alas].
Just like old times, I received my coffee and a little banana bread in bed from a smiling man.
Unfortunately, such sweetness is at odds with my perceptions in regard to Valentine’s day. I have a lot of completely non-romantic associations with the day. When I first went to college it was in January and my mom starting wigging out in a serious empty-nest thang laced with jug wine. So I sent her some native Syracuse chocolateschocolate-covered potato chips on Valentine’s Day. Thereafter, I always made sure to send her something or come by and visit with a gift that sometimes had something to do with where I was living or what I was doing at the time. Another time, my uncle incredibly sweetly sent me a huge gardenia plant, no doubt after yet another dramatic, painful break up with yet another dramatic painful asshole. (It was a cold and rainy day, and I told the delivery man he had the wrong house. sniff sniff.) That plant was a rare houseplant for me; I kept it alive for years and even got a few flowerings out of it.
I don’t really have any great romantic associations. I do remembering trying very hard (read too hard) to please and creating tension and build up of epic proportions and being disappointed. For example, there was the time I baked brownies from scratch (no big deal) for a cat lover, so I included a field of sculpted marzipan kitties romping on the top of the platter. I have no idea what, if anything, was done for me that same day. Proving mostly, I think, that I was able to get myself so worked up into a neurotic fever beyond Martha Stewart’s wildest imaginings, I could effectively bypass any pleasure. Either that or it just proves I really don’t hold onto all memories of boyfriends’ past in a pathetic world travel-size steamer trunk of excess baggage. It frankly could go either way, neurotic or healthy.
Mostly though, in re the opposite sex, Valentine’s Day has been a festival of feeling bad or not good enough and having the illogically effective taunt of commercial marketing to grind salt into the wounds of inadequacies. I think my favorite wallow might be the alleged roses from WBUR radio. That link won’t show it today, but every year the local National Public Radio affiliate does a pledge drive by which they will send roses on Valentine’s Day for you with a certain amount of cash for them. One year, I think right after Kabloom became the Starbucks of flowers, something happened with the system of accepting pledges and actual delivery of roses. I waited all day with a sinking feeling that my boyfriend at the time had done nothing for me all day and would continue to do nothing. Meanwhile, a male friend had told me about his dire straits, because he had pledged to WBUR and just found out no roses would be going to his wife. By the time my beau called me, and we arranged for a rushed and last minute get together for dinner, I was already feeling under or unappreciated and unsure of whether he gave a shit about my feelings by the time I saw him. (In retrospect, if shit and the giving of it were an absolute scale, his lack would best be represented as zero on the Kelvin scale.) I’m sure I had a gift for him, and he was completely empty handed. As the evening wore on, and “wore” is what the evening did to me, in true pathologically passive-aggressive style he made me feel shittier and shittier for seeing his empty hands and assuming it meant nothingness. Eventually, we got around to discussing the WBUR delivery problem, my friend who had been affected and the news stories that had appeared at the end of the day with apologies from the radio station and the florist. It was then that he told me that he, too, was a victim and unhappily the roses he planned never materialized.
From that day to this one, I still really do not know whether it was a very lucky and convenient lie or the truth. What I have learned, however, is don’t date people who you can’t trust.
Which brings me to today. I am happy; I am lazy and there shouldn’t be any roses, which is actually fine by me. I am not a flower lover, since they are dead and they become more dead looking and the allergic-to-everything part of me feels like maybe they are harboring enemies to my sinuses.
A better gift than the bullshit flotsam and jetsam stores push with a vengeance at the moment really is relaxing together. The cup of coffee and the kneeled kiss by my bedside in the neighborhood of my feet are nice touches.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll buy some half-priced chocolate together!
(Is it wrong that I kind of miss my neurotic feelings of holiday-induced anxiety and inadequacy. I do cherish an overwrought diva scene, afterall.)