My Funny Valentine

Whew! Valentine’s Day is over! I may be going out on a limb here, but is anyone else glad about that? I mean, I love chocolate and flowers and fancy dinners as much as the next girl, but sometimes having an entire day dedicated to celebrating the ones you love is overwhelming. It’s a lot of pressure to try to make sure the ones you love know exactly how much you love them with one card or one gift. Add on top of that trying to help your children fill out Valentine’s Day cards for all of their classmates and special friends and the chaos just builds. I’m not typically a cynical person, but is this a holiday that was created by Hallmark? How much do we spend each year on our Valentines? Is your marriage automatically better than mine because you get a bouquet of roses one day a year? Is my child more popular than yours because she had more suckers delivered to her as part of the school fundraiser? What do we want our children to learn from this celebration? What is their take away?

This is what I have been pondering over the last week. As I was mulling this over, I started thinking about the first Valentine’s Day I celebrated with my now husband. We had been dating about 8 months and had been engaged for almost 2 months when Valentine’s Day rolled around. I’m sure my expectations were high. And I wasn’t disappointed. I didn’t get a dazzling bouquet of exotic flowers, and I didn’t get a trip to a tropical island. He didn’t whisk me away to a five star restaurant and we didn’t have an expensive bottle of wine. No. What he did meant so much more. He came to my work with a potted plant – a gerber daisy – and concert tickets for that night to see David Allan Coe. He showed me that he knew me. Gerber daisies have always been a favorite of mine and David Allan Coe was a staple in my karaoke repertoire when we first met. It was a night to remember. It wasn’t the most expensive night out, but it was the most thoughtful. And it was funny. I was totally caught off guard when my husband walked in the door with a potted plant. And people still laugh when we talk about seeing David Allan Coe on what is supposed to be the most romantic night of the year. (If you’ve never heard his music, it’s great, but definitely not romantic.) My husband makes me laugh. I tell him all the time that’s one of the main reasons I married him. He’s my forever funny valentine.

So, what do we want our children to take away from this oh-so-special day? Is it about the gifts? Is it who gets the most cards? The need to feel special in a culture that encourages competition for attention? I think it’s none of these things. We want our children to be happy. We want them to laugh. We want them to find the one who makes their soul sing, even if the soundtrack is crass Southern Rock. And that’s not something that can happen one day a year. We need to model it in our homes every day. Children need to see you laughing with them, with your spouse and with your friends. They need to see that when you find the one, you are able to smile and find the funny even in the hard times. They need to know that the best of friends are the ones that know you, that really get you, and celebrate you for your uniqueness. It’s not the biggest bouquet or the most expensive gift that wins the day; it’s the knowledge that someone knows the real you and loves you just as you are. We all want to have the person that makes us smile and laugh in spite of our surroundings – a funny Valentine.

This year our Valentine’s Day started early. I leave for work about 6:45 each morning, so in order to celebrate as a family, everyone had to be up early. My youngest was quite the sight to see in her pullup, unicorn slippers and sunglasses – she has her own morning style. We gave our girls cards and stuffed animals. (They always want stuffed animals, and it makes me cringe every time because our house is full of them, but it makes them happy.) We ate breakfast together. And then we all went about our day. When I picked them up from school, they told me about the day, about the cards and the candy. My oldest even exchanged her first gift with a “special friend” this year. She was thrilled because he got her a stuffed animal and a gift card for ice cream. She laughed because he knows her well and knows that another stuffed animal is always a good idea in her world. We all enjoyed our day without disappointment and without comparing our gifts with others, because we know that building lasting, meaningful relationships takes more than a morning or one designated day. We know that we will all come back together for dinner and talk and laugh about our days. We know that we try every day to show each other that we are loved and understood.

My hope is that my girls will always have just as low key of a Valentine’s Day as we had this year. I hope they always appreciate having people around them that know them and love them just as they are. I hope that they eventually find the one that will go against convention and buy them a potted plant and concert tickets. I hope they have the good fortune of spending life with their own funny valentine.