So why did it bother me today when the Korean woman who runs the YES! Market two blocks from my apartment say to me “you saved $4.87 today and have a Happy Valentine Day.” This is not a wordy woman, she never says anything on a usual trip to the store, but here she is on a Sunday afternoon telling me, a single girl wearing a recyclable backpack to have a happy Valentine’s day. Why? Probably because Hallmark executives called her specifically and told her to tell people that. OR...
When my original mental plan for the day didn’t materialize, I decided to gather a couple of women and go see a movie and the resounding majority wanted to see the film “Valentine’s Day,” a movie that has gone so overboard in advertising its star power, I think I saw the preview back in December and thought “I’m never seeing that.” Yet there I was at the 1pm packed showing where crazy audience members were probably so happy to be outside after the Snowpocalypse they were clapping after each of the previews, (I really wish that part was in any way untrue). But when in the first ten minutes there are two characters who happen to have my name and that of another who well…let’s leave it at that…are in the same movie, my friend leaned over and said “oh my gosh, that’s weird, are you going to be OK?” that’s just plain unusual. No, I did not leave and names are just names, but I have to say it felt strange.
It also felt a tad off when in the movie Jennifer Garner's character tries to explain the origins of Valentine's day to her grade school kids and clearly this is the Gary Marshall version. Sorry, but for believers in Saint Valentine the stories we imagine are not true, just myths and, from a research point of view-- there were so many St. Valentines that the Catholic Church was never able to prove the Roman Martyrology due to lack of information and the church itself removed his commemoration from their calendar in 1969. I don’t doubt that there was once a Saint named Valentine and I really like the mosaic depicting at least one image of him (see top image), but let’s face it, this is a modern day consumer figment of our romanticism.
What I did like about the movie was one thing-- a brief moment where a kid is seen at a table surrounded by cuttings and pastings and he’s’ writing. That reminded me of all of the fun Valentine’s days I used to have using my Nana’s glue gun and scraps of lace and doilies and her teaching my cousins and I how to make heart paper dolls by folding and cutting.
Furthermore, it reminded me of a short story I read years ago in college called “Children Are Bored On Sundays.” Jean Stafford died when I was two years old but this story, published in the New Yorker magazine on February 21, 1948, contains some great images, reminding me of the days we used to sit and make handmade valentines, but also of the way alcohol is used here, the way it is used in so many movies today:
“To her own heart, which was shaped exactly like a valentine, there came a winglike palpitation, a delicate exigency, and all the fragrance of all the flowery springtime love affairs that ever were seemed waiting for them in the whisky bottle. To mingle their pain their handshake had promised them, was to produce a separate entity, like a child that could shift for itself, and they scrambled hastily toward this profound and pastoral experience.”
The irony is, at one time I used to think that perhaps there was something profound to be found in that whisky bottle or something akin to it. I don’t think that any more and I’m sure Emma from the story would agree.
However, I do think there is something terribly romantic in a song (that works as a poem) called “No Valentines” by Bernie Taupin set to music by Elton John. And with their song, let’s call it just another good day.
No Valentines
No more Valentine’s Day
No more Christmas cards
I’ve thrown them all away
No more sequined stars
No more birthday wishes
No more surprises
Who needs them anyway
No reason to get excited
Yes I gave you everything
I gave you earth and sky
And everything in between
That walks or crawls or flies
No Eastern mornings
It’s your cross now
Keep it all for yourself
It’s overrated anyhow
But keep my Valentine
I’ll keep my bleeding heart
Just let me out of here
Before the sentimental music starts
And your regrets
Fall like empty lines
Like the lies we write on Valentines.
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