| Mrs. Boro: Make every day like Valentine's |
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By: JEANNE BRAGG, Post Columnist
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Posted: Sunday, February 14, 2010 7:08 am
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I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day.
I think the sentiment behind it is great. I just hate that the way marketers and the media have sold the idea that there is basically one day during the year we should actively celebrate the concept of “love.”
We’ve just gotten over Christmas, I had three January (and one February) birthdays at my house, and the idea of buying yet one more card or one more “token” to let someone know I love them gets my goat. Isn’t that what wedding anniversaries and birthdays are for?
When I discussed this with a teacher friend, she totally agreed. She had students who never received attention from their parents hide presents for themselves in their schoolbags because the pressure to receive something was so overwhelming.
When I worked at State Farm, YEARS ago, Valentine’s Day was a circus. Flowers would start pouring into the lobby for distribution when work began and steadily flowed onto desks – some desks – all day. The people who had no significant other or whose significant other never sent them anything – or whose significant other had something else in mind – felt left out and I always felt sorry for them.
I’m sure there are many others like me who have balanced the ups and downs of marriage and feel like every day is Valentine’s Day. My husband and I try to never take good health or being together for granted and verbalize that frequently. It seems to be working.
He used to send me flowers, but I begged him not to. I’d rather pick up a $4 bunch from the grocery store every other week instead of have them arrive one day during the year.
I do buy him a gift – in fact, the same one for the past six years; the current CD for the Grammy nominations. We share that on our iPods.
Picking out Valentine cards puts me in a foul mood, too.
My mother has been gone for 20 years (Daddy 15 years before that) and when I read cards “To My Loving Mother” it makes me miss her so much I often cry in the aisles like a baby. My mother was sweet and loving, and easy to buy cards for, as was my Dad.
Every year I think the greeting card writers are going to “get it.” But when I look for cards appropriate for step-families, people who aren’t particularly easy to be nice to, and bosses, it’s hard. Try finding a Valentine for a family member who has just gone through the hurt of a divorce and for whom ill-will is still in the air. Family dynamics are changing as rapidly as cell phone technology but the greeting card community has yet to figure that out yet, in my opinion. If anyone needs affection, it’s someone who’s hurting.
One of the most appropriate cards I have seen recently said: “I love you more today than I did yesterday.” And inside it said: “Because yesterday you were getting on my last nerve.”
Somebody, please, send a note to Mr. Hallmark or Mrs. American Greeting and give them a clue that cards with modern sentiments are long overdue. Some not-so-traditional families need attention.
And do have a Happy Valentine’s Day.
Although I sound like a curmudgeon, I’ll send cards to my children and my husband.
I’ll fix something special for dinner (you’ll never find me out on that night) and listen to songs on the Grammy CD ... and be together.
Hopefully just like every other day.
‘Til next week. |
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