I have a confession. Even though I write a blog about the quest for true love, I am not a big fan of Valentine's Day, even when I'm in a relationship. I once received a rice cooker on Valentine's Day, and I don't really even like rice. This was the way my longtime sweetheart chose to remember me on the biggest day of the year devoted to romance. We're still together -- my rice cooker and I. Rice-Cooker-Giver, however, is long gone. While the fact that Rice-Cooker-Giver gave me a perfectly unmeaningful kitchen appliance to make a food I don't especially like on Valentine's Day is not a direct cause of our breakup, it is a fitting metaphor for our relationship that never really quite worked.
Valentine's Day is the judgmental mother-in-law of holidays that has the power to make me feel unworthy, unappreciated, or worse, ordinary. If you're single, Valentine's Day can feel like the phantom limb of a partner who is either no longer there or one who has not yet surfaced in your life. If you're in a relationship, it is bothersome to experience the cultural pressure to reiterate your love with a forced, showy display of material affection. I enjoy doing something fun, but low-key, for Valentine's Day, which is why I can only recall two truly memorable ones.
In college, my friends and I staged a mock wedding and beer party one Valentine's Day. Dressed in a tux and a white pouffy wedding dress, my boyfriend and I played the groom and bride, but we wore bags over our heads to "conceal our identities." The fact that *all* of our other friends played characters in the mock wedding, so anyone could easily guess that College Boyfriend and I were the lucky mock couple, never punctured our delusion that we had kept our identities a secret from the rest of the campus. After the mock wedding ceremony, which took place in the college chapel, College Boyfriend and I walked down the long aisle and into the waiting get-away car driven by our accomplice/friend. She whisked us away to a local motel, where we decided to stage another mock event at the bar before heading back to campus to the party. College Friend and College Boyfriend went in to the bar and sat down at a cozy table for two. A few minutes later with the bag off my head, but still in my wedding dress, I stormed into the bar screaming, "WHERE IS HE?!!!!," then grabbed College Boyfriend by the lapels and dragged him out of there. I like to think we provided the unsuspecting patrons with a dramatic soap opera moment to what would have been just another ordinary Valentine's Day spent at a bar drinking and dancing to Jimmy Buffett songs.
The other memorable Valentine's Day occurred when I was five months pregnant. My then-sister-in-law was in town for a professional conference. The only night my then-husband and I could get together with her was for dinner on February 14th. Since my then-sister-in-law was also pregnant -- almost seven months along -- I can only imagine what people thought of the three of us: two big preggos and a seemingly cavalier lothario squiring them on each arm for an odd Valentine's Day dinner. We were a modern-day commemorative plate the Franklin Mint conveniently forgot to make.
Loved this!
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