Valentine's Day

I think if I had to pinpoint the exact moment Valentine's Day became my favorite holiday, it was when my second boyfriend broke up with me two weeks prior to the heart and candy filled day.

I'm not sure how obvious it is, but I'm very much a "next foot forward" sort of gal. Faced with a lonely hearts Valentine's, I figured I had two options: hibernation and overt celebration.

I chose overt celebration.

I spent two weeks scouring stores and dreaming up craft projects. In the days before Pinterest, my options were limited to what I could find in magazines and my imagination. On February 14, I played Cupid, delivering baskets stuffed with cozy slippers, flower wreaths, chocolates, and fresh baked cookies to my girlfriends. Each delivery made me smile a little wider and healed my fractured heart.

Over the course of the next four years, I kept up my tradition, mixing it up with gaudy fake jewelry and brilliantly hued socks, Thin Mints and candy heart tee shirts. I added people to my list of recipients, mailing boxes to my sisters who were scattered across the state. Meeting Chad didn't slow me down. He shook his head in bemusement as I turned our living room into a basket assembly line, enlisting his help in perfectly shredding tissue paper.

Then I had Joseph and quit my job. Finances dictated reducing my basket making to just my sisters - though by that point, my friends were happily paired up and receiving their candy hearts from romantic partners. By the time Elizabeth came along, I had internalized the holiday, buying heart plates and making heart shaped muffins and cakes for my wee family of four, my Valentines.

Then, almost five years ago, Chad and I separated. Ten months later, I was faced with the first single Valentine's Day I'd spent in a decade. My friends were married with children of their own. My sisters settled into their own traditions, likely forgetting about the boxes I used to ship them. I walked through the store and for the first time in a long time, felt bone crushing depression at the thought of the holiday. I retreated to the bathroom at Target, away from the prying eyes of shoppers. I locked myself in a stall and sobbed.

I figured I had two options: hibernation and overt celebration.

I chose overt celebration.

I tossed the heart shaped plates of my marriage and bought new ones for the kids and I. In a moment of optimism, I also bought a fourth plate. Just in case.

I snagged felt hearts and banners, candy in heart shaped boxes, and enough flowers to fill every room of my house with the promise of spring.

I decorated the house while the kids slept, filling our tiny home with red and pink. I dropped off flowers and chocolate covered strawberries to another single mom who I knew would be facing the same empty day as I. I buried the sadness and celebrated with my gingers, a family of three, my Valentines.

The tradition continues today. I'm typing this at my kitchen table which is festooned with roses and draped with pink and white polka dot banners. Felt hearts are swaying in the breeze from the open sliding glass door and plump paper lanterns swing on the blades of the fan above me.

Something I learned all those years ago was that love has many forms. I'm a romantic at heart, someone who dreams of quiet heroes and a homey sort of love. I know Valentine's is a "Hallmark Holiday". I know it's a silly day meant to sell candy and flowers and cards, but to me, it's a day I can sit at a gaudily decorated table and look around it into the laughing eyes of my Valentines, pausing the fast forward of life in a frozen moment of pink chocolate.