Valentine’s Day falls in the dead of winter, and this has been one of the coldest, snowiest and wettest. Romantically, I can imagine a roaring fireplace in an isolated cabin, some brandy, no children, reading Marguerite Duras’ The Lover to each other. But I am lucky if I get some cheap chocolates and flowers from the East Village Key Food.
It is a holiday of disappointment, even if I know in the back of my head that my expectations are unrealistic.
For the many years I was single, Valentine’s Day was another reminder that whatever relationship I was in was not going to pan out, although not as big of a marker as New Year’s Eve. I rarely even received supermarket flowers. Rather, it was a day for commitment-phobic men to turn off their phones and spend their evening at the nearest dive bar with their pals.
The lowest Valentine’s point in this chapter of my life was arriving at the apartment of an on-again, off-again boyfriend and seeing several lovely Victorian valentines recently received from a woman. The explanation: “The trip to Nashville with her was not blissful.” Evidently she did feel the same lack or bliss or realize that this lack of bliss would bring me to that place at that time.
Admittedly, there was a long-time profusely creative boyfriend who had produced some very sweet cards and gifts on Valentine’s Day. But that relationship had run its course.
A high point was the first Valentine’s Day after I had met my husband. I was living in a loft on Chambers Street with a bunch of artists. I bought red construction paper and made an erotic collage and wrote a poem for him. It is rare for me to embark on visually creative projects unless absolutely inspired. I did not receive an erotic poem back, but I did enjoy the creative process.
We got married several years later on a sleeting February night, having carefully avoided scheduling the wedding for Valentine’s Day, because that would be too hokey, or for the date if the Superbowl, people might have stayed home to watch. So now the wedding anniversary pre-empts Valentine’s Day.
Then there is children’s Valentine’s Day. As an elementary school child, Valentine’s Day meant buying a box of little silly valentines to give to my girlfriends and maybe a boy I liked, and also receiving a heart-shaped Whitman’s sampler of chocolate from my grandfather.
With my own daughter the holiday has devolved into cards for the two grandmothers. When she was little, it was fun to help her draw charming Valentine’s Day cards for them, but she is beyond that now. I have to buy them, and I might not even do that this year. As a tween, she is now past passing out little heart-shaped cards to her classmates.
The Hallmark Co. milks this sappy, made-up holiday for all its worth. Usually I just grit my teeth, put the supermarket flowers in a vase, and realize that this gesture is not signiificant of true deeper love and caring.
Randi Hoffman has written art and book reviews for The Women's Review of Books, Tribes, New Mexico Magazine, and the New York Blade, among other publications. She has studied memoir writing in Ariel Gore's Literary Kitchen. She lives with her novelist husband and 13-year-old daughter in the East Village of Manhattan.
Originally published on 2/9/2014.