When I was old enough to understand what Valentine’s Day was, it seemed like the perfect day to get married. So I asked my mother why she and Dad got married February 6^th  when they could have waited eight days for the most romantic day of the year. She made a disgusted face. “Why on earth would we do that?”

My family cultivated rebellion against popular culture. If most people did something, we did not unless we had logical and well considered reasons. There was no case of support for Valentine’s Day, but I still had dreams... Someday a beautiful boy will send dozens of roses and a box of chocolates with a ring hidden in a truffle. An airplane will fly overhead at the exact moment I find the ring and write in the sky with puffy white smoke “Marry me or let me die”.

In grade school we were required to give a Valentine to every kid in the class regardless of personal feelings. I carefully selected cards and candy hearts for boys I liked and examined the ones received in search of a secret admirer. Once I thought I found one, but when cornered at recess he said his mother made him give me the extra special valentine with the decorated heart sucker. I told him I threw it in the garbage because it tasted nasty. And besides that, "I hate you." When embarrassed, I lied.

My only valentine from a boyfriend came in fifth grade. He flunked kindergarten so was older with muscles and face hair. He wore tight t shirts and had a James Dean attitude. “Leader of the Pack” was in the top ten and played every night on the radio. I sang along and pictured my parents refusing to let me see him again, saying tearful goodbyes and watching him ride his bike into a train. I replayed the scenario and changed his demise. Sometimes he was hit by a semi-truck and sometimes he rode off the Mississippi Bridge, but the final scene was always the same. He died in my arms as I promised to love him forever. We broke up after he sent a message through one of my girlfriends that he wanted to marry me and would then "F" me. My return message was “yes” to the marriage and "no" to the "F'ing". He never spoke to me again but began meeting my girlfriend in the school alley. For years I kept his valentine behind my radio and pulled it out whenever they played "our song". 

In middle school and high school boyfriends didn't last past two weeks and never had one for Valentine's Day. I came close once, but he was too boring. People said I didn’t act right with boys. I didn’t flirt, had opinions and argued. In the early 60's boys thought their future wife should be like their mothers, but that wasn't my plan. Home Ec was the only class I almost flunked. It was a protest against forced domesticity. I wanted to take shop and make ash trays instead of casseroles.

Since I held no threat, girls used me to drop hints to their boyfriends about what they wanted for Valentine’s Day. I noted the shocked expression and asked what he could afford. Then I began the negotiations.

By the time I went to college I dismissed Valentine’s Day as a capitalistic manipulation of the masses and pitied those innocently sucked into it. Two years later I was engaged to the one and only boyfriend who surpassed the fifteen day record. As February approached I told him not to worry about getting anything for me. He looked surprised. “Why would I?”

We’ve been together almost forty years and don’t do Valentine’s Day, 

with one exception. We weren’t married yet and he was living in another state. People expressed sympathy we not spend Valentine’s Day together and I launched into speeches about how ludicrous it was to designate a day for everyone to express love. It was nothing more than crass commercialism sponsored by Hallmark. I lived with friends who had been subjected to my tirades and tried to warn unsuspecting visitors to not bring up the subject. On Valentine's Day I came home exhausted from working at a school where the kids were hyped up and crazy from sugar and parties. There were a dozen roses on the  table.  I ignored them until we sat down for dinner and it seemed rude not to ask whose they were. I was handed the card and teased unmercifully.

If I had not been moved to tears, and shopped the next day for a carved wooden box to keep the petals, I might have ranted against this holiday for the rest of my life. My basic opinion hasn't changed. I still deplore the pressure to profess what is best said spontaneously. But how I loved those flowers.  And the beautiful man who sent them.

Image: Google

NOTE: Last year I used the same picture for the original version of this post. My four year old grandson saw it on my computer and screamed, "Grandma! What did you do to him?"