flowers.

The Valentine’s Day blues began for me in Mrs. Mack’s second grade classroom. {Side note: I loved her class. She told wonderfully irrelevant stories about her sons; we knew the questions to ask that would successfully divert her from the lesson.} That was my first real memory of the day of love, and the first time I remember boys bringing gifts to the girls they liked. It was the first time I remember my heart sinking a little in grotesque disappointment because I wasn’t one of the those girls. The wonderfully ironic and sickening part of this story is that the girl that received the cubic zirconia heart necklace in a plastic display case from, say, John, also received a teddy bear and chocolates from Tyler, a hand made card from Jim, and another cubic zirconia heart shaped necklace from JT, identical to the one from John. She went home with all these things and all of that attention, and I went home with homework that I didn’t finish in class because I was so distracted by all of the girls opening their gifts. And the funny thing is, even though I have gotten older, at twenty-six, it’s the same kind of sad.

This could seem like I am beckoning your pity. I am sure in some deep and meaningful way, these experiences have made me a more interesting and thoughtful person. So don’t pity. Just read.

I thought to myself, “maybe next year!” Maybe I will be that girl in the third grade. I wasn’t. Maybe it was the perms that I sported thanks to my former beautician of a mother, or the fact that I was insanely self-conscious and incredibly hard on myself. But the gift-less Valentine’s Day stayed with me until high school, when a boy we will call Ed, who was a foot and a half shorter than I was, and had the same amount of hair as the the ever elusive big foot, purchased a heart shaped balloon for me, from me. That’s right. I was in every club imaginable, and one of those clubs sold balloons to help adolescents show their love to their fellow classmates. I entered his American History class. He held up his dollar. I gave him the form to fill out. He addressed it to me and wrote something that I was supposed to be flattered by. I blushed in embarrassment, not flattery and I ran, fast. This experience was not redeeming.

The following year I was an office aid. Valentine’s day in the office was all shades of red. There were flowers covering every available surface, and you had to make your way through the maze of balloons just to get from the desk to the counter. My senior year of high school, I finally received the flowers. My heart skipped a beat. Who could it be?! The card read: “love you. -Dad”. If you knew my father, you would know how momentous this gesture was. He has forgotten eighty percent of my mother’s birthdays and maybe ninety percent of their anniversaries. She is exceptionally lucky if she gets a card on the day of love. I immediately asked my mom if she told him to do this. “Was this your idea?”. “No,” she said. “I had nothing to do with it”. I will admit that I walked much taller out to my car at around three that afternoon. I paused and looked around with anticipation as I unlocked the door, flowers resting on my car's hood. Maybe I took extra time with the unlocking in hopes that someone would notice the roses, and maybe ask me who they were from. Maybe. And maybe I would say, with a sweet kind of grin, “they are from my dad”. Though his gift meant the world to me, and I will forever hold on to the card, despite the fact that I throw most things away, it’s not the same as from someone that loves you because they are choosing to and not because you carry their genes.

So here I am. Twenty-six, telling the same story as I did in the second grade. Except this time, the feeling in my heart isn’t sinking quite as much, as most days I am at peace with my singleness. And this year, I got a rose.

Ken is one of our regulars. He lives at the YMCA across the street, and in the beginning, I didn’t trust him. I didn’t like the way he asked for his tea. I didn’t like the fact that he came to the side counter instead of the register, as if he was something special. Apparently he used to go to Berkley. Perhaps that’s where he cracked. There are moments that he speaks with such intelligence, such know. And then there are other moments when his sentences run together, and very little sense is made. My attitude changed on the day of chocolate covered strawberries. He saw me washing the fruit, and asked if I was dipping them. I told him I was, and he let me know immediately that he would want one. This annoyed me a little. “OK,” I said.

I began dipping. This is one of my favorite things to do. I get down right giddy. They get covered in chocolate and then drizzled with white...swirls and zig zags and dots and squares. I finished, put them in the case, and up he jumped. He wanted just one, he said, and I haphazardly chose one from the case. He was telling me something about how coffee leads to flagulence. “And if you drink too much coffee”...he looks down at the strawberry...”I was reading a study”...he looks up at me...”You Make Beautiful Food! Did you know that? This is too pretty to eat!” That’s the moment when our friendship began. He had no idea that he had just given me the best compliment one could give.

On Friday the thirteenth, he walked through the door in his bouncy sort of way, smiled his bright, so-much-about-the-world-is-good sort of smile, and greeted me with, “Hey! Happy Valentine’s Day!” “Thank you,” I said, holding back the fact that it wasn’t quite Valentine’s Day. “You know what I do?”, he said. “I go to all of the chocolate shops on the day after Valentine’s Day when they discount all of their chocolate and I buy it and give it to all of the beautiful ladies...and hey, here, you can have this!” He walks over to his back pack, takes out the plastic rose with the miniature dove glued to its stem, and hands it to me to keep. I smiled my bright, so-much-about-the-world-is-good sort of smile, and said “thank you”.