Of Valentine's Days...

I am writing this when I should be writing a paper for school. Sometimes, my blog or book serves as a great warm-up to get my academic writing juices flowing. Tonight’s one of those nights.

I don’t really know what I want to write about tonight. So bear with me. Its pretty random, or, at least I have a feeling it will be.

I have been thinking a lot about my early childhood, mostly my childhood prior to my family moving away from their birth home in Fairfax, MO. Aside from some very dark and disturbing memories, I was close to my grandmas and I knew they loved me. The stirring of my heart came because I was re-reading my grandma’s diary doing some research for my book. Her writing qualified my heart’s memories and solidified them. She wrote…

 

Of countless sleepovers with cousins…

Of a tree house built by my grandpa…

Of family dinners not too far removed from a Braverman get together...

Of her crying for hours after I moved away…

Of me chasing kittens…

Of a meal served in the tree house in the orchard among the fireflies…

 

I always thought of Fairfax as home. I cried every time I left, even at the age of 31 when I said “good bye” to my beloved Grandma for the last time. St. Louis has never been home to me. And on the one holiday of the year when we are beckoned to think about love, the word love applies to both of my grandmas. It always has and it always will. And with them gone, a piece of my heart is gone as well.

I remember Valentine’s cards in the mail, filled with stickers and cards that could be punched out into paper dolls. They never ended, and they were always filled with a wonderful letter in my grandma’s signature penmanship. Her letters were the highlight of my month. When they were opened, they spelled home to me. I can still remember every single one (I am one of those individuals who have been cursed gifted with a photogenic memory). Her cards were the salve to my heart when I needed to be reminded that I was loved.

Valentine’s Day was usually a dismal effort in my immediate family to display some form of resemblance to love. It was never a holiday where my brother or I was celebrated, it was usually just for my parents. As we aged, and the homeschooling movement grew and became more entrenched in our lives, February always centered on Richard Little Bear Wheeler’s Courtship talk. As is typical of this oppressive movement, us girls were oppressed and controlled. Our minds were brainwashed, and we were trained to be pure, to not glance at the opposite sex, to be obscenely careful in choosing our clothing, and to be certain that we were not flirting in any manner. The boys of course were just boys, and us girls would file out of the church, somber, taking our commitments that we had made seriously. We felt like a failure if a boy ever paid attention to us, though we longed for it. I still remember the oppression that I felt and the penitent prayers that would ensue that night in my journals are heart wrenching to read. The very essence of the beautiful creature, woman, squelched. And if a young man so much as looked at me, I was a failure and a whore. I knew that when courtship became a concept that my parents were married to, that I would either have to leave the house and date, or die alone. Courtship would have never worked for me and I am proud of myself for realizing that then. Courtship for me would have ended in a lonely single life or married to a man who was every bit as abusive of me as my father.

The February of 1999 was the month I nearly died with pneumonia. While the world celebrated love, I was fighting for the will to live one more day in a home where love was a foreign concept.

 

Then I hit 20 two years later and had gained my freedom from my home. I had a job and discovered the power of feeling beautiful through a wonderful store that I still have a passionate love for: Neiman Marcus. Designer clothes, colored hair, manicured nails, pierced ears. All those things that I was told would turn me into a home wrecker, but were in fact, aesthetic needs that fed my soul. And this guy just happened to notice me. That Valentine’s Day was different.

 

I had 2-dozen long stemmed roses delivered to my cubicle, and this amazing boyfriend. And I knew as certain as those stars in the sky that night as we walked our picturesque neighborhood, that I would never be without love again.

 

Valentine’s Day was once a depressing concept, an eternal reminder of the love I longed for and didn’t have, of the dismal and bleak future that looked like a never-ending road in Kansas. It was painful and lonely but it’s not any more. My boys hand out Valentines to their classmates. We design boxes for said Valentines. My boys are made to feel special by Mom and Dad. My husband is the best Valentine a girl could ask for.

 

That amazing boyfriend just surprised me with pink roses and a love note. He has every year for the past eleven. And even though this particular Valentine’s Day was spent in taking care of our Asperger son who still hasn’t mastered the concept of getting sick in the toilet, my heart was full. It was full of love.

 

Makarios.

 

P.S~ I know I have readers who wonder when their time will come, readers who are well into their late 20’s and early 30’s wanting-wishing-that next year would bring the desires of their heart, wondering when their time for love will come. Dearest, I can assure you that it will not come unless you make a bold move for love. It will not happen if you are waiting for your parents to arrange a courtship. If you are still in your parents’ home at this age, it will never, ever happen. Love requires boldness, and the first step in finding a soul mate, is to love yourself. Get out from underneath your parent’s home. Don’t wait for life to find you; you have to make it happen. And love cannot be controlled. Love must be free in order to flourish. And love cannot be afraid. Please contact me if you need help.