Valentines Day

Valentines Day
by Thelly Reahm - Tidbits of Time

1955

Valentines were scattered, willy nilly, all over the living room carpet.

Bruce, in a squatting position, was pondering over each one, trying to decide who got what picture or verse. Tomorrow was the big day.

“Mushy ones are for girls,” he said.

“And funny ones for the boys?” I asked I knew he didn’t like the idea of giving boys Valentines.

“Yeh, I guess…I don’t know why we have to give Valentines to anyone.” He said wrinkling up his nose in disgust.

It was now a class rule at Bay Park School, that if a child sent a valentine to school, they had to send one to each child in the class, so nobody’s feelings got hurt.

I could go along with that. I understood, because I had been waiting for eight years to receive a valentine from my spouse. Maybe that was why Bruce couldn’t see any reason for giving Valentines. His father hadn’t been a role model for that.

I talked about the lovey, dovey sentiment behind Valentines Day, and assured him that when he got older, and had a girlfriend, he would want a mushy card to express the sentiment that came
so hard for boys.

Meanwhile, I could smell the cupcakes baking in the kitchen oven. I volunteered to make treats a lot for school parties, because I was a stay at home mom. More and more mothers were opting for jobs outside the home, and didn’t have time to bake. I baked almost every day, so it was no big deal to me.

I frosted the cupcakes white and decorated them with tiny redhot hearts and covered them ready to take to Bay Park School the next morning.

I made enough cupcakes to have one each for dessert that evening. We always had to have something sweet for after, that had always been a must in the family I came from, and I carried on the tradition like it was etched in stone.

The next day, after I delivered Bruce and the cupcakes to school, I went to the market to buy chocolate covered hearts for my husband and my children. I wouldn’t have to bake today, because these delectable candy hearts were their Valentines and dessert.

After the children had cleaned their plates, they asked “What’s for after?”

I brought out the treats and laid them in front of each of them.

“Ooooh! Yummy Valentines!” they chorused, “with our names!”

“They also say “I love you” I said hugging them.

Just then my husband got up and left the kitchen. I thought, as usual, he didn’t get me a Valentine. I swallowed hard.

He came back in to the kitchen table and sat down. He pulled one hand from behind his back and presented me with the first Valentine I’d had since I’d gotten married. I just beamed as I opened it.

The front said “I need you…” I opened it up to the rest of the verse on the inside... “like a whole in the head.”

I faked a laugh for the children’s sake and said “Thank you,” to my husband.

I got up from the table and went to the bathroom. It was the only room in the house where I was assured privacy.

My nose was squinching up and the tears were welling up in my eyes. I flushed the toilet to muffle the sounds of my crying. For sure the card was not worth waiting eight years for...certainly not what I expected.

I knew Jackie Gleason, playing the part of Ralph Kramden, in the Honeymooners said derogatory things like that to his stage wife Alice, but I had expected more. I’d had eight long years to fantasize about this occasion. Eight years of seeing the cards my girlfriends received…mushy Valentines.

I was still young and sentimental. I wanted a mushy Valentine…one that tugged at the heartstrings. I’d just turned twenty-six and I’d never received a box of candy, a bouquet of flowers or a slurpy, sloppy, mushy Valentine.

I guess to him, the words ‘I love you,’ came with great difficulty.

I turned the cold water on at the basin and splashed water all over my face. I had dishes to do, kids to bathe and bed down, and probably my wifely duty to perform. Especially since I had received a Valentine.

No matter that it was filled with sarcasm.


Post Script: It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that sarcasm was anger coming out sideways. That made two of us who were angry, only I just turned off and shut down.

When he was diagnosed with lung cancer in September 1998, he married his childhood sweetheart, Mickey, with whom he had been living for some time. She had divorced her husband of fifty years and they tied the knot. I acknowledged to myself then that he had wanted his ‘first love’ all along.

It was true…I’d been his ‘rebound’ girlfriend after he and Mickey had broken up over some silly argument they had back in the Forties. Today in the myriad of how-to manuals you’re taught not to marry your rebound girlfriend. He did, that was his mistake.
I guess he was trying to make an ‘honest woman’ of her, by marrying her. The kids told me she was a practical nurse and that she took good care of him. By being married, she would be able to see him in ICU when the time came, and help make decisions if he could not.

Then, on Christmas day, he died.

Mickey never received a Valentine from him. I hoped that by age 73 he’d learned how to say ‘I love you’.

During his illness, I thought perhaps he would make amends to me for the hurts of the past. After all, I’d stayed with him for seventeen years. I was the mother of his children. I thought maybe he would even send a greeting card, since apologies in person were not his strong point. Even a sarcastic Shoebox card would have worked, but that never happened.

I still get my expectations up too high. That’s my Pollyana complex!