Remember those days back in elementary before inclusivity, zero tolerance and political correctness? Yes, those days. The February days when the classroom craft for Valentine’s week was to make yourself a “mailbox” into which your many affectionate classmates would post their lovingly inscribed Valentine cards. You gave cards to the kids you liked; the kids you admired; the cool kids with their curly blond hair and their crinolines; their confidence and their patent leather shoes. You did not tend to give them to the shy kids with straight brown hair and crooked teeth; the kids with a little extra poundage; the kids dressed by strict mothers in scratchy navy tunics and sensible shoes. No prizes for guessing which category I fell into. The teachers, fearing meltdowns insisted that the boxes should not be opened in class and while many were delved into on the playground after the final bell had rung, I always kept mine until I got home, hoping against hope that a few more kids had taken pity on me and added me to their list. Alas it was rarely the case. The seeds for future Valentine failures were sewn, watered by tears on Valentine’s Night.
You can imagine my delight, when I discovered on moving to Ireland that Valentine’s cards were not traded in the classroom but were instead shrouded in secrecy. They fell into two categories: declarations of true love or joke declarations of true love. In either case they were always anonymous; sent by mail with the handwriting disguised. These cards were the cause of much twittering and giggling and beatings of hearts. I was at a girls-only school by then and although we all wore scratchy tunics and sensible shoes, it was still only the popular girls who were the recipients of these mysterious greeting cards. The theories and hypothesises as to who had sent them however, were shared by us all, as were the occasional heart-shaped box of chocolates. I was still falling on the side of Valentine fail but my opinion was always sought as to the identities of likely Lotharios and I never had to admit how empty my own mail delivery was.
Through the teen years and early twenties the Valentine’s angst hit fever pitch. Now it wasn’t acceptable to just receive cards, they had to come attached to that ultimate status symbol, an actual boyfriend. It took a certain amount of planning. If you had managed to snag this top tier fashion accessory for the Christmas dinner dances, you hung on like grim death ‘til February, determinedly sporting his school scarf and turning up at his rugger matches despite the fact that you both had nothing in common, his halitosis made your eyes water and you really fancied his older brother. I was usually only invited to dinner dances to make up the numbers, paired with the guy who had just broken up with his girlfriend and who abandoned me as soon as the dancing started to go in search of fresh meat. Lacking the advantage of snagging the Valentine’s date early, I tagged along to the rugger matches sporting a school scarf that was left at our house by a friend of my younger brother’s, hoping to catch the eye of some mud-covered prop forward. As February rolled around on the calendar, I would greet it with equal measures of angst and hope. Would this be the year? Would there be a card in the mail for me?
Eventually I did the marriage thing and I suppose it should have upped the ante in the Valentine stakes or at least made the day more predictable. But by and large the romantic dinner dates were disasters and romance evaporated as soon as we regressed down the aisle. Since then I’ve spent the requisite years bullying offspring into decorating handmade cards and icing heart shaped cookies for every single kid in their classes: overwhelmed by keeping life on an even keel and underwhelmed by romantic gifts. The girlish dreams of diamonds and cruises and waltzing in ballgowns have long since been replaced by grown-up stuff, the practicalities of working and paying the rent. Finally cured of the angst and the hope my jaundiced eye falls on the calendar. It doesn’t take much for the old feelings to surface. Oh Crap it’s Valentine’s Day again!
Oh Crap it’s Valentine’s Day – Clo Carey February 2019
Photos – Clo Carey
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Teetering on the Edge 