Grace Notes #6,  2/11/07

Natalie Costanza-Chavez

Grace Notes,

grace-notes@comcast.net

Doilies   

     I first noticed it right after Christmas, while still overfull and sugar-saturated from the Chocolate Santa’s, the peanut butter bells, and the candy canes. I wheeled around a tight corner at the grocery store, and lo and behold, Valentine’s Day! The boxes were still palleted, eye-high and brimming with pink, red and heart-dotted goods: candies, cards, fleece bears, velvet roses.

     During the next weeks, I glanced as I walked by the growing displays, pausing each time near the boxes of “kid cards.” I knew both my sons would need to choose a box for the school valentine exchange – each child brings a valentine for every child in the class.

     There was a time when I could choose the cards for them. But, boy-rules are beginning to crouch in the corners of my life  - some cards are considered too embarrassing, too young, too mushy, too cute, or simply too boy-appalling on too many levels for a lowly mother to understand.

     So, I eye the cards and keep track of what my 10 and 12 year olds may deem acceptable, while mostly thinking “yuck” to the overly commercial choices.

     Then, last week, while searching for pomegranates and milk, I shortcut down the aisle where all the ribbony-balloon strings hang in your face. I stop abruptly. Doilies! Who knew! I buy lots of them. Red, Royal Lace, heart shaped doilies in two sizes. White, Royal Lace, heart shaped doilies in three sizes. For good measure I throw a single package of pink Royal lace, heart shaped doilies. 

     I am brimming with geeky-mother excitement, though I don’t realize this (the geeky part) until later. All a-jitter with anticipation, I remember the tick, tick, zip, tick sound the thin doilies paper hearts will make as I thumb-fan two of them apart and pull. I remember the tiny pieces of die-cut paper that will fall and flutter and stick in the glue I’ve spread on a paper plate. “We must get started,” I think.

    Then I go home and show it all to my sons.

    They are horrified. Lucas actually starts to back up and move away. “No way” is all he can manage, though his head is shaking vigorously from side to side. “No way.”

     “Gabriel?” I say leadingly, turning to my younger son and sweeping my hand along the pile of supplies like the Wheel-of-Fortune lady, trying to spark his slightly higher tolerance for scissors and glue. “Not me.” He says. “Nope.”

     “But, why, guys? Lucas’ head just continues to shake no, no, no.

     Why? You have to bring valentines cards anyway –why not make them? We can put them in plain envelopes. They don’t have to say anything meaningful.”

     They are too shock-caught and astounded by me and my supplies to even utter their objections clearly. They shove their hands deep down in their pockets, lower their overworn caps, and slouch away like small gangsters, cool and self conscious. I hear one say to the other “We’ll get the boxed kind” as if doing so will save their lives. 

     So, I learned something:  a valentine still means something risky, slightly shocking, and real. Giving a meaningful one can still be embarrassingly hopeful and can still make you potentially vulnerable.

     Yea!

     Of course we can make fun of Valentine’s Day. It is overblown, commercialized, and too pretend-sweet. We can describe the worst ones we’ve been through, the saddest ones we’ve been through, and the ones we’ve simply closed our eyes and tried to bulldoze, quickly, through.

     But every one of us remembers that feeling of wonderful horror and zip and hope that comes with “liking” someone. It makes us human. It makes us breathe. Having it, or wanting it, or hoping for it again, makes us live, and makes living bearable, and sometimes unbearable, and certainly – always – meaningful.

     The tiny spark of embarrassing love that you learn to identify in a school hallway, that holds you captive and reeling, that helps you to learn it since you certainly can’t shake it, is the root of the same love we live out each day, our whole lives long.

     We just learn to grow the root thicker and stronger, to include more loves by sending shoots. Happy Valentines Day. It stands for passion and drive and risk – in love, in work, in hope, in spirit – all the things we never outgrow, continually redefine, and never stop needing.