Henry Colt poses with Valentine’s Day boxes at Sea Mart. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
Be Mine
The ritual pairing off of mates that happens every Valentine’s Day starts at an early age. I don’t remember which grade it was (likely fifth, possibly fourth, hopefully not third), but I remember quite clearly that Hannah H. and Hannah W. were my top choices for valentines. Eliana G. was a close third.
More out of cowardice than from a desire to challenge gender norms (the phrase “gender norm” wouldn’t enter my vocabulary for at least another eight years), I decided that instead of being proactive, I would play it cool and wait for one of the two Hannahs to drop a valentine in my cubby. (Readers be warned: this is never a good strategy.)
Now, like any sane elementary school, mine was well aware that personalized Valentine’s Day cards are dangerous and exclusive territory: anyone who doesn’t get one, except for the exceptionally stoic, could wind up in tears.
So our teachers issued a schoolwide ban on individual valentines, and orchestrated a different type of holiday, the Valentine’s Day Factory: n number of kids in the class, each of them more or less contractually obligated to make n-1 valentines while sitting deskside with crayons and a stack of construction paper, an egg-timer beeping when it was time to move on to the next valentine. Strict restrictions on content and card-shape. Absolutely no personal messages, probably no hurt feelings. Not much in the way of any feelings, for that matter.
But most of us knew the Factory was just a charade we had to perform for our teachers. There would, of course, be discreet agreements, sidelong glances, secret little notes (Hershey’s-Kiss-accompanied or otherwise). Some of these notes might even be inscribed with a single thrilling phrase, the ultimate expression of elementary-school romance:
I like you.
By the end of the day, everyone in the class would know who had received valentines from whom. Some fifth graders, though, would not have received any valentines besides those from the Factory—which, as I type this sentence and think of them sniffling on the sidelines, still deflates my heart.
Many Valentine’s Days later, my freshman year in college, I drank a healthy portion of bright-red vodka punch and sent the following text to my ex-high school girlfriend, who’d broken up with me that summer.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Valentine!!!
I later learned that our relationship may have ended due to her involvement with a third party, but at the time, I was basically still in love with everything about her except the fact that she once asked me what I’d scored on the SAT, and then questioned the accuracy of the figure I gave her.
In any case, sending that text sent me into a delicious panic for the rest of the night. As I moved from party to party with an ever-growing and ever-more-inebriated pack of freshmen, I kept checking my phone—could it have buzzed in my pocket without my knowing? Would she respond? What would she say?
If there were opportunities for non-virtual Valentine’s Day romance, I didn’t notice them, because I spent the rest of the night caught up in the rush of having actually sent my own, cellular valentine—and having sent it to not just anyone, but to the one human on earth who truly felt like my valentine. (A few hours later I learned over text that this human did not feel the same way about me.)
I was also caught up in a communal rush: the entire campus that night was lit with collective romantic energy that seemed the opposite of the individualistic college-party hookup vibe. It was, aside from the alcohol and the possibility of sex, just like the fifth grade.
A little over a year later, I met an exceptional woman whose long curly hair was as red as the previous February’s vodka punch. On the way back from our first date (a hike up a mountain in Maine) we narrowly missed smashing her car into a bull moose. Post-swerve, we reached for each other’s hands out of reflex and have been together ever since. She still lives in Maine.
But this morning she told me over the phone that the only Valentine I’ve ever given her was a generic heart-shaped box of chocolates from CVS. She has given me multiple illustrated collages and one jar of homemade caramel.
Though I questioned the truthfulness of her statement out of pride and out of hurt (and pointed out that the chocolates were likely accompanied by a handwritten poem), I think she may be right. The fact is, I just don’t get that excited for Valentine’s Day anymore because, for the last four Valentine’s Days, I’ve always known who my valentine will be. (But I’m always, always happy with the result.)
The Valentine’s Day I grew up on is a day of open-ended possibility. It is a day of unfused romantic energy looking to be fused. And sometimes that fusion is nothing more than a tiny pink candy heart, like the one illicitly slipped in my cubby some fifteen years ago by Eliana G.
It said: Be Mine.
