O, Wikipedia, provider of dubious information, where would we be without ye:
Saint Valentine (in Latin, Valentinus) is the name of several martyred saints of ancient Rome. The name “Valentine”, derived from “valens” (worthy), was popular in late antiquity.
Yup. Valentine’s Day = multiple martyrs. Got it.
But also:
Valentine = worthy.
Yeah. I like that.
Let’s think about the latter point today. Worthy. We are all this, chocolate boxes or not.
Dear Worthy,
Happy Valentine’s Day, you. It’s getting to the point where I have to admit I don’t know you anymore, and I might never know you again like I once did. Maybe words can’t fix everything. Once, I thought they could. I believed in words the way you believe in images now. You will not read this. I send up smoke signals and you are blind to them by choice. You know what we spoke of on Christmas Day. I hoped, but now I try to love you differently, even if you don’t love me. I love you for your idealism, I love you for your dark curls and chocolate eyes, for your passion for flossing. I love you for falling at my feet like a puppy when we were so much younger. I think I could still find that tree, if asked to. Thank you for making me feel worthy. I hope I made you feel worthy, too. Thank you for the rides in the VW bus, thank you for Montreal and ordering coffee for me in French, thank you for the teapot and the jasmine tea. Thank you for Tom Waits and the Skydiggers and the Trouts and wanting to show me your world. Thank you for absorbing mine. Thank you for making me Gouda cheese sandwiches and slipping them into my bag at grad school. Thank you for putting up with my whirling, churning mind. Thank you for appreciating it and its moments of magic. Thank you for saving every bit of cash you had for the most glorious ring I’ve ever seen and will give someday to our April diamond. Thank you for understanding my work and directing it so very beautifully. Thank you for the things I dare not say here, the private moments beyond words. Thank you for sharing your family with me. And thank you for being a wonderful father to our beloved, amazing girls. I wish life were different. I wish you would listen to me, I wish you would listen to someone who loves us both (there are many). But what I wish for may not happen. Apparently, I am a slow learner. This is the way of the world for many. I hope you are happy. You are worthy. So worthy.
Happy Valentine’s Day, you. You did not get what you wanted in life. But instead of getting angry, or bitter, or self-pitying, you became your own person. You are vivacious and hilarious and the least defensive human being I have ever met. Yes, you cluck (‘weh-heh-hell’) from time to time, but there is no one on this earth who loves me more and gives me more when I am down and out. I love you for your family tales, for your happy genes, for playing ‘Star Wars’ on the organ for me and and the other one I love so much. I love you and am humbled by how much you have provided for me. Listening to you play with the girls is a gift beyond measure, a gift I do not yet have words for. You are full of the gift of play, and I like to think that I inherited some of that, and that it will save my life someday. Thank you for teaching me how to write a paper, thank you for teaching me about ‘I-Thou,’ thank you for playing the polkas in the car that made both babies leap in utero. Thank you for showing me how to live and love without anger. Thank you for teaching me so gorgeously to be brave and kind in the face of death and suffering. Thank you for loving me unconditionally, and trying so very hard to understand what I cannot find the words to tell you. And thank you for being brave on that horrible day when a door was locked between us, and only you could go home. You make me feel worthy. And you are so very worthy of all good.
Happy Valentine’s Day, you of such a difficult beginning in life, of such conflict in your own heart and mind. You know pain, and that allows you to recognize it in me. Thank you for giving me your love of learning. Thank you for teaching me that calculus means ‘little pebbles.’ Thank you for telling me again and again, ‘Don’t panic; I’ll tell you when to panic.’ And this year, when it’s been time to panic, thank you for making sure the girls and I had heat, food. Thank you for reminding me throughout life, whenever I dreaded an event, that it was simply ‘an opportunity day.’ I rolled my eyes then, but I no longer do now. Thank you for the love of theatre and books. Thank you for attempting to teach us to eat French fries with a fork—what we did not understand then but understand now is that it was a metaphor: your wanting more and better for us, as your mother would have, and her mother before. Your humor and wit know no bounds, and those genes, I like to think, have spilled over into your offspring’s DNA. Thank you for taking my childhood self on Saturdays in search of all the things that my classmates had so easily that I could not find: Rubik’s cubes, Chinese Jacks, Jordache bags. You did not stop until we found them. You wanted us to have what they had, and again, only now can I see the full beauty in this. That small act made us feel worthy, more than we could tell you then. I know you do not like to speak about your past, like the time when you saw the cardboard castle and knights in a toy store window, knowing your family could not afford such a thing. And yet, there it was under the tree, because your mother wanted you to know you were worthy, that even cardboard castles can appear when you least expect it. I know there are many things you do not like to speak about, would prefer not to know about. I understand better now. Some pain is beyond imagining. Pulling the ripcord of such pain feels, well, just plain stupid. And you are not a stupid man. You are brilliant, and I am so happy that you have found that which makes you happy. On stage, you are safe, and worthy. I am here to tell you now that you are worthy of all good offstage as well. Thank you for all you have given me and taught me.
Happy Valentine’s Day, you. You were my near-constant companion growing up. I put up with your favorite Micronaut joining my dolls in the dollhouse that your nieces play with now. As you pointed out recently, I slammed the door in your face more times than either of us care to remember. And then there was the now-infamous incident of the Massacre on the Red Shag Rug. But after that, we never seemed to hurt each other again. Oh, sure, there were things like the ‘at least you have a pelvis’ admonishment, and my extreme Fear Factor response to ‘Jenn, we are getting out of the house and going berry-picking. This is a family vacation.’ But any misunderstandings now arise from the simple, honest desire to help each other, and to teach each other who we are now, as adults. I cannot tell you without short-circuiting my keyboard how much I love you. The tears come most readily with you, and I always wonder why that is the case, as I know you love me and I love you and that is that. I keep a photo of us by my bed. It is my first memory of holding you. They had placed me in the white rocking chair with a pillow in the crook of my arm, and then they entrusted to my small arms…you. You, your complacent, calm, chubby infant self, those huge brown eyes, were suddenly on my lap. Spilling off my lap. My arms tightened reflexively around you. They were fussing over the photo they were about to take, but to me, this was a life-or-death matter. I was proud to be holding you, but I thought they were not viewing the situation with the gravity it required. I was holding my brother, and picture be damned, I was not going to drop you. The Apocalypse could have come and gone, and I would still be sitting on that chair, shielding you from all harm. I know only now that I missed my opportunity to shield you from harm. That you were in pain years ago, and no one knew. Why do I know this? I know this because these days, you have been the one to try to shield me from harm. And as we sat on a driftwood log, looking out at the water near you, with me sobbing, you told me you could understand more than I knew you could. I want you to know I listened. I tease you about your BBQs, your hikes, your overzealous landscaping. But I listened. I will keep listening. You are worthy of all good. Thank you for all you give me (and try to give me). You are the funniest person I know, the most likely to reduce me to gasping and table-thumping, and I love that I knew that about you first in life, that I got to discover that before anyone else. You amaze me, daily, and your fabulous wife and daughters and son remind me that sometimes, love wins, works itself out, tangles and untangles and tangles and untangles, beautifully.
Happy Valentine’s, Moon Child, with your diamond’s glow. ‘I will absolutely never be a Goth,’ you told me. The next day, I caught you staring in the bathroom mirror. ‘Can I use really red lipstick for a minute? Like bloody red?’ you asked. I acquiesced, and caught the pleasure hidden in your serious face. Sometimes, our destiny is clear to others first. You can be whatever you want, I tell you often, as long as you are kind and brave. Kind and brave is where it’s at. You roll your eyes at me like I rolled my eyes at my parents, and I love you more. Your sense of self, at 7, is stunning. You are no one’s. Not even mine. You belong to yourself. In Hebrew class, you named yourself ‘Haleeleet’: flute. You don’t understand why I am so fascinated by this. I’ll tell you, even though right now, you are too impatient to listen to me: Nothing has a clearer voice than a flute, my dear. I hope you will always insist on being heard, as you are now. Your authentic self is a flute singing above the daily din. Let the strings and the horns do their thing, battle it out. Stay true, Haleeleet, and let that voice ring out. You are a pale, dark, unlikely beauty. Four pounds at birth; your twin, miscarried. How did you stay inside? My dear, you are worthy. You are meant to be here. And you make me feel worthy. To be the mother of a gleaming flute? I must have done something right. I must have. Do not worry: I know I am just the vessel you passed through, and I’m fine with that. You are not mine to keep. The world needs you, dear. But I love you madly, and I am here, for truthful answers and cranky discipline and hugs you don’t always want. I am here. I am here. I am here.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Firecracker Sun Child, with your radiant warmth and radiator hiss. You fooled me, Munchie Face. So serene for three months, and then WHAM. The mischief exploded into full bloom. I worry, dear heart, because your power, unleashed, is outrageous. I tell you what I tell your sister: Kind. Brave. But for you I add: NO BULLYING, EVER. You have the charisma to be great or appalling. So we will no doubt battle it out for years. I am Obi-Wan, so I will win, kid. Your feelings are powerful and intense. Sometimes, I fear I have passed along some of my more unwieldy genes to you. And yet, you are a snuggler, a circus act full of giggles and death-defying leaps, a vaudeville show. Shirley Temple crossed with Ethel Merman, I will tell you. If I can get you to sit down long enough, I will find Shirley and Ethel on DVDs and show them to you. Your laugh is divine. You want to be good, I know you do. So I am here. Your brand of powerful magic makes me feel worthy indeed—how could such a FORCE of nature have passed through me? But like I tell your sister: I know you are not mine to keep. So I will shepherd you well, and lock you in your room occasionally while you weep like you are being tortured. And I will stay firm, love, because you need to witness kind strength before you can figure out how to use your own. You are a sparkler. I love you passionately. I am here. I am here. I am here.
Happy Valentine’s Day, all of you. You and you and you and you. You all are so worthy of a beauty-filled Valentine’s. You make me feel worthy. I could write this all day. About you who made me laugh so hard with real-life Scrabble and filthy tales and soulful discourse. About you, my first friend of mermaid days, and you, my blonde ‘destiny’ friend. About you, my best friends from college, who know so much, who understand so much. About you, my best friends up here, who try so hard to figure out what I need the most. About you, the unexpected and quiet, wheels turning far away. About you, the life-changer, the cat. About you, the silent always. About you, of WAX 101 and Saylorville Lake on a freezing winter day, who traveled the world to a house by a freezing river to save a life. About you, you read the blog, who care so very much and share so much of your own lives, with me, a stranger.
You are worthy. You make me feel worthy.
Bless you.
And happy Valentine’s Day, for all the right reasons.
***This idea brazenly stolen from a friend of mine who consistently knocks me out with her soulfulness and beauty.
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