It seems as though Valentine’s Day always fell on weekdays when I was a kid. It feels that way because I have this image. It’s an image of my father, work-weary and possibly a little buzzed, leaning forward in order to catch the screen door with one mud-encrusted workboot. The lean caused the shopping bags dangling from his huge Dad-hands to swing, leaving flashes of red, and white, and chocolate in their wake. I fight the urge to clasp my hands in anticipation…
Mother’s box came first, and it was huge. Though he may have chosen pink on occasion, my memories are of red, bright red, deep red, heart red, love red. And white; white lace, the scratchy kind, bunched along the border. The largest of these heart-shaped, satin-wrapped boxes featured silk flowers in the center, roses, of course. As my mother tore through the plastic on the outside of this candy-stuffed work of art, my sisters and I leaned forward slightly, in anticipation of a chocolate waft.
She never ate one right away. There was no spontaneity to the way my mother chose chocolates. Should you have happened upon the still beautiful box even a day or two later, you would have found most of the candies pinched. She always pinched before she ate. She was picky that way. And, I couldn’t help but think that at least part of her motivation lie in making her candy less palatable to those of us with smaller hearts, emptied sooner.
In elementary school we made valentine boxes. At first, we crafted as a class. We bent construction paper, and scrunched doilies, and shot arrows through our hearts with red and pink crayons. Later, left to our own devices, the boxes became more ornate or, maybe, just more shiny. Either way, they were impressive…and, to a girl who feared her valentines would be few, somewhat menacing. As I slid my box between two others whose owners’ low expectations directed them to end of the table furthest from those expecting the most traffic, I began to devise ways to remove it with as little fanfare as possible.
There was always a party during which someone else’s mother served cookies or cupcakes. We drank red juice and peeled red foil from thick chocolate hearts.
At the end of the day, I’d jump from the bus and run up the driveway, through the door and up the stairs to the first bedroom on the left. Closing the door, I’d dump the contents of my now disheveled valentine box onto the folds of my unmade bed. My favorites were the ones with red lollipops threaded through the message. They had white hearts painted on them and tasted just like Luden’s cough drops.
In high school, Valentine’s Day was marked by the Band Department’s carnation sale. In what proved to be a stroke of marketing genius, strategically placed posters throughout the school suggested that carnations weren’t just for “couples” anymore. Carnations could also be purchased for friends, and at two-for-a-dollar they were a steal. The Popularity Derby was on!
In high school, Valentine’s Day always seemed to fall on a Monday. It feels this way because I have vivid memories of Sundays marred by an overwhelming feeling of embarrassment yet to be experienced, and dread. Or, maybe it was just dread, and the embarrassment is embellishment supplied by experience.
Flowers were distributed during homeroom when two or three flute players interrupted morning announcements with a tentative knock on the institutional door. I know they were flute players because flute players didn’t look like anyone else in the band. Flute players were exclusively female and cloned apparently, as all were thin, and wore their wheat-colored, stick-straight, long hair parted in the middle so that, at times, it fell forward in cascades, hiding, for just a moment, their carefully cultivated poetically pained expressions.
They flitted about the room, dropping carnations on desk corners, often making return trips to the same two or three desks, over and over, again. White carnations were sent by friends. A pink carnation meant someone wanted “to know you better”. Red carnations were the real prize, and usually only appeared on the aforementioned two or three desks. Occasionally a boy received a red carnation causing the boys with empty desks to shoot him glances filled with envy later hoisted on pointed barbs.
As it does for so many things, age takes the guesswork out of Valentine’s Day. It isn’t about wondering anymore. You either have a Valentine or you don’t. If you have a Valentine you get a valentine. If you don’t, you don’t. For someone who used to retrieve her box from the other end of the table with as little fanfare as possible, it’s a better plan.
Roses are a mainstay. I’ve received them singly and in bunches. They’ve been wrapped in paper, shipped in boxes, and presented in vases. I enjoy them presented, preferably at the office. After all, it’s not about the flowers; it’s what they represent. Whoever came up with the idea of shipping in boxes fails to understand the power of presentation.
And, while I like roses, I would trade every one, even the salmon-colored ones and the yellow ones with red-tinged edges, for a single tulip. A red tulip.
Today I woke to winter sunlight filtered through empty branches swaying in winds that carry the hope of spring. In front of the window sits a table and on the table a vase filled with a fountain of red tulips.
© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved
Posts
