Why My Heart Is Your Valentine

‘Tis the season for caring and sharing and newly professed love! My favorite day of all days.

I find it makes sense that some people of the “web generation” are not particularly fond of Valentine’s Day, such a warm and personal holiday. Never mind the TV, malls and billboard advertisements. It’s about the distraught couple trying to find a resolution, the father waking his daughter up with Valentines Day smiles and hugs, and celebrating the idea that Saint Valentine passionately -yet secretly- defied Claudius by continuing to perform marriages for young lovers. It’s about writing that letter or telling that special someone how you feel; before it’s too late, or because you want to begin.

Someone once said, life is too short to keep secrets. Take it from me; we’re all here for a pre-determined time and when that time is up, that love is lost. This day is here to help those of us pass the message along a little bit easier. And the need for love, is not always a romantic one. Once upon a time, when we were young, we were taught to share kind Valentines messages with the rest of our classmates, at what age did we learn to stop doing this, to stop caring?
 
As a little girl my grandmother would send me a card, like clockwork I’d wait for it in the mail. We’d later visit them with a box of chocolates and she’d always gift me some sort of candy jar filled with gummy bears with cute lids inscribed with “I love you” messages written in puffy paints. What I loved most was that every year my sweet-toothed stepfather would buy several of those tin cans of popcorn we all love, a couple dozen variety of flowers, bags of the finest licorice and gummy bears - the high quality stuff, not your average Red Vine or HarBro - and the funniest Valentines card a father could pick out for his daughter at the nearest Osco Drug (always with at least an 8 1/2 page long letter attached). He would sneak into my room before I woke for school, and place all of it on my bed. The thing is, I never wondered why he wouldn’t do that for mom. I didn’t have to. And mom would love watching me smile, with the occasional grunt about him always buying too much candy. Everyday was Valentines for her, for a while anyways. He often wined and dined her, took her shopping and went on romantic road trips. They had plenty of romance. He purposely, with thoughtful intention, spoke to my heart…to a child’s heart. to show me that I was loved, that Valentines Day wasn’t only for romance and proposals. It’s about sharing love, making someone smile.. and just because you can.

No one else I knew at such an impressionable young age, had such wonderful Valentines Days. I hold those days, and the way he was, and encouraged me to be …very close to my heart. Close enough to be able to grab it and share that feeling with others. And sure, this is the first year I haven’t had a Valentine to share a kiss with. But I’m loved, and I love and I have friends to share my heart and smiles with…

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by whathappens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” -Khalil Gibran

Happy St. Valentine’s Day to all!