It’s Valentine’s Day. A day to celebrate love.
As I write that sentence, I smile, shake my head because it’s a funny sentence. A day to celebrate love. A day. Which grammatically means one. One day to celebrate love!
Last weekend I was out running errands. I was on a mission. Cards for my daughters and husband, pencils and stickers for my students. Valentine’s Day, placed right in the middle of the year’s shortest month, was days away.
While errand-running, I ran into a friend, a former colleague outside our local Barnes & Noble. She’d headed out on this freezing, rainy day to pick up some Valentines, too.
We stood there on the sidewalk, fingers and toes going numb from the cold, catching up. A lot had happened since I’d last seen her at a colleague’s retirement party last spring. Or was it the spring before?
She’d become a grandma again. This time to a grandson. She scrolled through her phone, showing me pictures of her beautiful grandbabies. Her eyes sparkled as she filled me in. She told me about her daughters who had baby-sat my kids when they were wee ones like her grandbabies. We stood on that wet sidewalk, catching up, counting our blessings, sharing the love.
Our talk transported me back in time, at least 15 years ago. We’d collaborated a lot then, become friends. She, a decade older than me, became a role model. She was committed to her work and still a fully engaged mom. A passionate artist, she was an inspiration.
Back then, I’d fretted over not being good enough, struggled to find balance in my life. I worried about things big and small. Life was difficult, hard work. Because I was still tied to my perfectionistic ways.
I think back on those Valentine’s Days of years gone by. The days when my students entered the classroom full of excitement, still beaming over being served heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast. Heart shaped pancakes for breakfast on a school day?! The thought had never occurred to me. And not thinking about showing my love through a grand gesture made me feel bad.
But that was then. Listening to my friend recount her recent days with her grandchildren and grown children, I was reminded of what’s truly important. This woman was the embodiment of love; self-assured, kind, and strong. She was available and present. And here she was, outside a bookstore, poised to buy her grandkids a book or two that she undoubtedly would read to them over and over again.
I smiled picturing her on the sofa, reading to her grandkids with her gentle, nasal voice. How loved they must feel! Then I thought of my girls when they were little; freshly bathed in their footie jammies, snuggled in close, following along in a picture book as I read aloud. Remembering this nightly ritual from those days so long ago, when life felt so rushed, I feel happy. I realized all was right in my world, even if I didn’t know it then.
It’s in these seemingly insignificant moments of our daily lives, when we make ourselves present, available; we show our children they matter, that they’re loved.
On this Valentine’s Day, I’m reminded that simple, regular expressions of love are tools that uplift our children. Cheers from the sidelines, goodnight hugs, a jar of maple almond butter in the fridge. All are expressions of love. As are just because text messages, answered phone calls and cards that arrive in the mail a day late with the words, “I love you” written in ink. And maybe, just maybe, heart shaped pancakes on a school day.
What I do know is, love is powerful, infinite, transcendent. The ultimate gift we parents can give and receive.
© Kathie Z.