Excuse me. Do you have a card expressing desperation?
Today is the day folks will celebrate a Saint who defied the law and secretly married couples who desperately wanted to be together. He went to prison and was later executed for his roguery but lucky for him some entreprenuer named Hallmark immortalized him in the form of a candy giving, card swapping, let's get together for a fancy meal holiday.
Think about it. It is a day for the desperate. A day when people will take a risk to express their feelings for another human being while hanging onto the slim hope the other person has recipricol feelings. It is a day when hearts are more often broken than bolstered.
I learned this the hard way. In fourth grade I had a terrible crush on Kim Storlie, a cute lass with pouty lips who could melt your heart with a demur smile. As fourth graders go, I thought myself to be a real catch since a) I made the best grades in the class, b) the teacher thought I was a heaven sent child in the midst of a bunch of rogues (especially when she was sober), and c) I had already had more than my fair share of girl friends during my illustrious school career. So on this ill fated Valentines Day as we all walked around the room and dropping our boxed set wonders of love's expressions into each others construction papered mail boxes, I slipped my biggest one into Kim's mailbox. How thrilling it was to sort through the twenty or so cards to find a nice one from Kim that actually had additional writing on the back that said, "I think you coot. Kiss me." Wow! She couldn't spell worth a darn but my oh my, I bet she could kiss!
So I go up to her during punch and cookies and with her card in hand say, "I think you are cute too and would love to give kissing a try!" She looked at the card, took it out of my hand and said, "That isn't your card, that is _____________'s card. What are you doing with it? Like I would ever want to give you a kiss." Yuppers, crush my heart you minx, I hope you get tonsilitis when you kiss _________.
Toss in a Sherry who tells me in eighth grade she is ditching me on Valentines Day because the silver tongued, velvet throated crooner Richard has smiled at her while playing his guitar and singing sappy love songs and she is pretty sure he has feelings only for her. I tell her to go and chase yon Richard and may she find happiness among the C and G chords while inwardly I thought someone was crushing my heart with a meat tenderizer. Four years later she would ask me to run away with her and to get married... Hmm, I wonder what happened to the song of the siren Richard?
In marriage I didn't fare any better with Valentines Day being a rather painful day until it was turned into a day to celebrate the kids. When that happened it became a marvelous affair as they really were the ultimate expression of what true love is; the giving of yourself for another human, or in this case four precious humans.
So it isn't any wonder that I had developed a cynical eye for this day of desperation. You find yourself wiping the tears from rejected children's eyes, listening to the heart wrenching stories of friends who suffer from unrequited love, or even worse, abusive love. You wonder just what was that guy thinking when he created a day to celebrate love, no, desperate love?
And yet... somehow we cynics find within us a glimmer of hope. A longing for all of our past pains and disappointments to become pavers on which we walk towards a carefully manicured garden where true love grows. A place where for the first time in our lives we discover tenderness instead of analytical harshness, affirmation in place of criticism, and most of all, a place where desperation has been weeded out to allow the expression of hearts to flourish in the gentle rain of shared dreams, the sunshine of celebrated victories, and deeply rooted in the belief your kindred spirits can truly meld into one.
It is that hope that suppresses the cynic in all of us and keeps us coming back, willingly exposing our hearts despite the lessons learned from our tortured pasts.
May this be the year hope wins over experience.
Think about it. It is a day for the desperate. A day when people will take a risk to express their feelings for another human being while hanging onto the slim hope the other person has recipricol feelings. It is a day when hearts are more often broken than bolstered.
I learned this the hard way. In fourth grade I had a terrible crush on Kim Storlie, a cute lass with pouty lips who could melt your heart with a demur smile. As fourth graders go, I thought myself to be a real catch since a) I made the best grades in the class, b) the teacher thought I was a heaven sent child in the midst of a bunch of rogues (especially when she was sober), and c) I had already had more than my fair share of girl friends during my illustrious school career. So on this ill fated Valentines Day as we all walked around the room and dropping our boxed set wonders of love's expressions into each others construction papered mail boxes, I slipped my biggest one into Kim's mailbox. How thrilling it was to sort through the twenty or so cards to find a nice one from Kim that actually had additional writing on the back that said, "I think you coot. Kiss me." Wow! She couldn't spell worth a darn but my oh my, I bet she could kiss!
So I go up to her during punch and cookies and with her card in hand say, "I think you are cute too and would love to give kissing a try!" She looked at the card, took it out of my hand and said, "That isn't your card, that is _____________'s card. What are you doing with it? Like I would ever want to give you a kiss." Yuppers, crush my heart you minx, I hope you get tonsilitis when you kiss _________.
Toss in a Sherry who tells me in eighth grade she is ditching me on Valentines Day because the silver tongued, velvet throated crooner Richard has smiled at her while playing his guitar and singing sappy love songs and she is pretty sure he has feelings only for her. I tell her to go and chase yon Richard and may she find happiness among the C and G chords while inwardly I thought someone was crushing my heart with a meat tenderizer. Four years later she would ask me to run away with her and to get married... Hmm, I wonder what happened to the song of the siren Richard?
In marriage I didn't fare any better with Valentines Day being a rather painful day until it was turned into a day to celebrate the kids. When that happened it became a marvelous affair as they really were the ultimate expression of what true love is; the giving of yourself for another human, or in this case four precious humans.
So it isn't any wonder that I had developed a cynical eye for this day of desperation. You find yourself wiping the tears from rejected children's eyes, listening to the heart wrenching stories of friends who suffer from unrequited love, or even worse, abusive love. You wonder just what was that guy thinking when he created a day to celebrate love, no, desperate love?
And yet... somehow we cynics find within us a glimmer of hope. A longing for all of our past pains and disappointments to become pavers on which we walk towards a carefully manicured garden where true love grows. A place where for the first time in our lives we discover tenderness instead of analytical harshness, affirmation in place of criticism, and most of all, a place where desperation has been weeded out to allow the expression of hearts to flourish in the gentle rain of shared dreams, the sunshine of celebrated victories, and deeply rooted in the belief your kindred spirits can truly meld into one.
It is that hope that suppresses the cynic in all of us and keeps us coming back, willingly exposing our hearts despite the lessons learned from our tortured pasts.
May this be the year hope wins over experience.
Labels: Life
posted by Frustrated Writer | 2:59 AM
4 Comments:
Valentine's day can sometimes be like walking an emotionally sado/masochistic gauntlet.
amen to that.
I pride myself on the fact that I've never been out on Valentine's Day. wait...should I be proud of it? oh well.
have a good one Mark!
I like this, Mark. It's well written and makes you laugh and also think why bother. It's the perfect cynical post. And I am sometimes cynical. Even when I am also being a romantic sap.
As for valentines, I was going to fill them out this year and give them out at work and karaoke. They were really cool as well. Batman valentines. Awesome. But they're buried in the apartment somewhere.
this is such a great post. Thanks for sharing.
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