The traditional gifts are flowers (good) and chocolate (a mixed blessing). I remember one year Lorenzo the Magnificent and I went to a craft store and bought bunches of bits and we each retired to our own corner and made valentines for each other. Lorenzo is not an artist, not a crafter, but darned if he didn't make the niftiest valentine using using large ribbon roses he had purchased in different colors. The one I made was nice, but I loved the tactile, three dimensionality of his. It was lush. I still have it somewhere . . . I bet it wouldn't take me more than two hours to find it, if I didn't get distracted.
Well, now I am distracted. I am remembering other handmade cards I have received. None other than Twin once made a card for me, with elaborate hand-drawn spirals, very horror vacuii and decorative, which I treasure along with the other cards he has given me, some with very meaningful messages.
Nosson, my X (he deserves a better designation than that!) made me several cards, including a President's Birthday card (we went out for the first time on George Washington's birthday, and he gave me chocolate covered cherries - pretty clever) and a snazzy Purim card card which featured a slightly inebriated Nosson (one is commanded to get drunk on Purim, believe it or not) saying "hic .... brucha Ester .....hic ..... brucha Toby ....." a play on the Purim phrase, blessed be (Queen ) Esther.
I wouldn't mind spending time on Valentine's Day with some art supplies (stickers, stencils, glue-on rhinestones and fabric flowers, and facy papers) and Twin making each other cards, but something tells me that strychnine might be a preferable alternative as far as he is concerned!
But returning to Valentine's Day, I have been looking through a book of mine about the history of valentines, and salivating over some early, hand-drawn and written examples. They are so charming and such a treat for the eye, the faded sepia copperplate and naive watercolors . . . I lust after them.
Of course, greeting cards are available in such a dazzling and inexhaustible variety nowadays, that purchased valentines can be drool-worthy as well. Amidst the dross and the mediocre are some phenomenally-designed cards which are either so charmingly designed, or so mechanically clever (elaborate pop-up cards are now sold even at bookstores) that only those who are dissatisfied out of principle could fail to be delighted to find them in the mail.
I guess there is no point to this post - just an acknowledgement of the fast-approaching day which brings with it such exalted expectations - and such hyped suggestions for romance on the television news etc. - that some letdown is almost inevitable. I said almost.
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