Cupid, Draw Back Your Bow

Valentine’s Day is the best holiday of the whole year. Any observance that has red, pink, roses and chocolate as its central themes makes other holidays look sad and less festive. I’ve never had a bad Valentine’s Day--even as a single person. Despite the advertising attempts to make singletons feel less adequate than people who participate in the economy of Cupid, I have nothing but good associations with the day of hearts and flowers. One year, as I watched my sweetie-less girlfriends weep and wail over the devastation of a lonely hearts and flowers day, I wondered why I was not similarly affected. I mean, let’s face it, “distraught” might as well be my middle name, so it’s weird that something so emotionally charged would leave me virtually unscathed. But I figured it out. It’s so simple: Valentine’s Day is really the only holiday not associated with family, at least not the one you were born into. Think about it--your mom never makes you feel guilty over missing Valentine’s dinner and you don’t have to draw names for giving gifts. Valentine’s Day is truly the one day of the year when any celebration you partake in is with someone you chose, wisely or not. In Sarah Weeks’ Be Mine, Be Mine, Sweet Valentine, everybody goes out of their way to please the one they chose as their other. I like Valentine’s Day. It’s not foisted on you, you walk straight into it of your own volition. I can appreciate that.

http://www.amazon.com/Be-Mine-Sweet-Valentine/dp/0694015148

http://www.sarahweeks.com/

Time And Time Again

Ritual is important. Nothings binds us to each other like special things we always do no matter what. Every person I know, regardless of their past, seems to cling to at least one sweet memory of ritual. Little things like reading the comics together each Sunday or walks to the park to feed the ducks. Somehow, seemingly mundane interactions can take on a sort of golden quality. There is a story in family lore that, as a preschooler, I unknowingly planted the seed for ritual. I don’t remember Valentine’s Day when I was three, but the legend is that I was crushed when my mom received a valentine from my dad and I did not. Apparently, I was so inconsolable over the idea that he “didn’t love his own little daughter,” he was compelled to bring home a valentine for me on that and every subsequent Valentine’s Day until I was an adult. Even in years when we were separated by distance both emotional and geographic, I could still rely on February’s ritual. Scarlett and her daddy have a ritual, too. When the hour for night-night arrives, they collect a bouquet of binkies, give kisses, and make their way up the stairs. I am waved off by a tiny diva hand if I try to follow. This is their time and no mommies are allowed. In Dan Yaccarino’s Every Friday, an ordinary workday morning turns into special time. Sometimes you just have to hang out with dad. I get it.

http://www.amazon.com/Every-Friday-Dan-Yaccarino/dp/0805077243

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Yaccarino

Ann Likes Red! Red! Red! Red!

When I was learning to read, my mom had a rule: if you get frustrated and behave badly, you aren’t in the mood to learn and you are finished trying for the night. As high-strung then as I am now, I endeavored mightily to stay calm (I must have counted to sixty on the flowered couch a million times), but I was rarely successful and would lose both my cool and my reading opportunity. It makes me mad almost forty years later. It never seemed like my brother had a hard time controlling his temper. Why was it always so hard for me? Scarlett has some self-control challenges, too. She likes to have several binkies at all times, but when she gets ticked, she hucks them in toddler angst. Before they leave her hand, she already regrets the impulsive decision to throw them and is begging for them back. Like most toddler anger shows, it’s pretty funny, but I can’t help thinking of my failed attempts at self-mastery when I see her struggle with the consequences of rash choices. There might be hope for her because Dorothy Z. Seymour’s Ann Likes Red, about a little girl with very strong opinions, seemed to be the literature that calmed the savage beast in me. It was the first book I ever read independently and I’ve been saving it to read to Scarlett. Somehow, reading a book about a girl who loves red to a toddler named Scarlett on Valentine’s Day seemed fitting.



www.rwrinnovations.com/.../ann_likes_red.htm
http://www.purplehousepress.com/dorothy.htm