The Day of the Valentines

 When I was seven years old and attending Will G. Price Elementary School, a reporter from the local newspaper came to do a fluff piece on little kids and Valentine’s Day. I remember I was sitting at my desk, going through my homemade Valentine box when he came over to interview me. “Did you get a Valentine from your boyfriend?” he asked with a cheezy grin and I was confused. “Ummm…” I whispered and he lost interest and left, looking for another child to question. What did he mean, I wondered. We gave Valentines to everyone in the class.  I remember looking around the room, my gaze settling on one of my favorite friends (who also happened to be a boy) and wondering if he was my boyfriend. Of course I got a Valentine from him, and I tried to catch the reporter’s eye again, to let him know that yes, I did have a boyfriend, but he had moved on.

Not too many years later, Valentine’s Day morphed from a fun class party with heart-shaped cookies and red punch to The Day of Crushed Expectations. Just being a teenager was hard enough, but add to that being a socially awkward, painfully shy nerd, and school was not a happy experience. The popular, pretty girls received notes and flowers while I perfected my “I don’t care” face and hid behind my waist-long hair. Nevertheless, each time I opened my locker, I held my breath for just a beat, hoping that a note might fall on the floor, and I would discover that someone had a secret crush on me. It never happened. I ate lunch with my socially awkward and nerdy friends in “C” hall, our backs against the lockers, laughing at the gooey-eyed couples and believing we were far too superior to participate in the silly relationship drama that ran rampant in high school. 

College was more interesting, living on a small campus in a small town and learning to navigate the almost-but-not-quite adult world of sex and relationships. I spent many nights (and some days) sobbing, heartbroken, in my room while listening to “Toto” and “Chicago,” vowing off men forever, only to be completely smitten the following week with the guy who had smiled at me over a beer at the Öl Stuga. In my junior year, a guy I knew from one of the fraternities dedicated a song on Valentine's Day on the radio station we all listened to. “This is from Mike to all the girls at Bethany College,” the DJ laughed, as the familiar strains of “Love Stinks” wafted through our collective stereo speakers. My roommate and I looked at each other and laughed, too.

 I eventually made peace with the day, after becoming an adult and gaining experience in the relationship arena. I had a few wildly romantic Valentine’s Days, more than a few disappointments, and a few unexpected surprises, but it wasn’t until after I had children that I truly came to love it again. Even though my husband might forget what day it was and then scramble to bring home flowers from the convenience store at supper time, it didn’t really bother me. Even though one of my coworkers routinely got obnoxiously large floral arrangements to display on her desk, I laughed it off. The real thrill was being a room mom at the elementary school and helping my daughters make homemade boxes to put their Valentines in, wrapping tissue roses around pipe cleaners as party favors, and making cupcakes with pink frosting for treats. It made me remember the innocence of my own childhood school parties, before girls became mean and boys became impossible. It was fun!

 

Now, my children grown, my romantic relationships non-existent, and the dog unable to buy me flowers, I more or less ignore February 14 (except to post a couple of snarky memes I find amusing). I feel sorry for the men these days, trying to meet the impossible standards set forth by Hallmark and Kay Jewelers, and I feel equally bad for the women who are told that if he REALLY cared, he would make some sweeping grand gesture to proclaim his love. I know that real love, while it can be full of romance and passion, is often quiet. It’s in the mundane, day-to-day routines, and could look like cleaning up after supper or taking the kids to the park or relinquishing the TV remote. It’s bringing home ice cream. It’s planning a date night. It’s putting another’s happiness above your own because that’s what love does. And, contrary to an old movie line, love means OFTEN saying “I’m sorry.”

 I hope to experience romance and passion again. I hope to have a relationship where I can make someone happy by loving them and being loved in return. My life is interesting and full as it is, and I have friends, family, and dreams. It would be wonderful to have someone to share my life with, but it would also take someone whose baggage matches mine, and there’s the challenge. It might not happen. But, then again, it might.

Cooking for One

 

It’s no secret that I’m a mediocre cook at best. Growing up, I helped Mom make cookies and watched her make meals for us, but I never really “learned how to cook.” My siblings tell me that Mom was an excellent cook, but by the time I came along, she regularly used canned vegetables, instant mashed potatoes, and other convenience foods that didn’t require a lot of effort. She once told me that although she knew how to can and make bread from scratch and all that, “I don’t have to do that anymore.” Consequently, I can make a mean chocolate chip oatmeal cookie, but without a recipe, I’m not very creative in the kitchen.

At my first wedding shower, guests were instructed to bring a favorite recipe to give to me, the blushing bride, with the idea of helping me be a successful wife. Easy taco casserole, Sara’s yummy potato salad, tuna mac and cheese--I still have some of those 3x5 cards in my recipe box, tangible reminders of the women who tried to pass their cooking skills on to the next generation. I tended to rely on the familiar, however, choosing to make the meals that I had grown up with. That made me happy, but not my husband. “What kind of a cook is she?” his mother asked him early on in our marriage. He felt obliged to share that he told her, “Not the best,” perhaps hoping to inspire me to ask his mother what his favorite meals were. It had the opposite effect.

The second time around I married into a farm family, and my mother-in-law was a no-nonsense, make-everything-from-scratch type woman. I remember trying to bond with her by asking how to make her incredible sweet rolls. “First, you take your dough,” she began, and I stopped her. “Wait--where do you get the dough?” I asked. She stared at me for a second, and then (as I remember) walked away. That Christmas, she gave me a subscription to “Taste of Home” magazine. Subtlety was not her strong suit. But I didn’t have to worry about my family starving. My husband ate what was put in front of him (thanks to his mother, no doubt), and even polished off the leftovers no one else wanted. My children didn’t know anything different, and so everyone remained well-fed as I tried to create tasty meals day in and day out. But I rarely deviated from the familiar, and only then if I had a recipe.

Cooking for a family is vastly different from cooking for one--or two-- and it was a difficult transition after my divorce. My then-fiancé did most of the cooking for us, since he loved to experiment and was very good at it, and he occasionally let me make one of my old tried-and-true meals, politely eating what I made but not asking for seconds. Feeling depressed one evening, I called my ex-husband. “Did you think I was a good cook?” I asked pathetically. He didn’t even hesitate. “As I remember you were,” he said, his voice like warm butter. “Why, doesn’t he like your cooking?” I sighed. “Not particularly,” I said. “It’s pretty unimaginative, I guess.” “He’s an idiot,” he replied, and I gave a little laugh. “Maybe so…”

These days I have only myself to cook for, and I’m still struggling with how to make a decent meal for one. If I cook, it’s usually on the weekends or days off, most evenings opting for frozen dinners or chicken breasts in the air fryer that leave me thinking, there has got to be a better way. I consider delivery services and wonder if I’d save any money by using them. I collect recipes and make shopping lists, but then I question the practicality of spending money on that one ingredient I need but will never use again or not have time during the week to use what I’ve bought. I have occasionally made my “serves a family” dishes and frozen what I didn’t immediately eat, but after plowing my way through two containers of chili, it loses its charm, and I end up shoving the remaining three to the back of the freezer behind the fish sticks.

But then there are the times I’m inspired, and with no recipe but my imagination, what I have in the fridge, and an arsenal of Penzy’s spices, and I somehow manage to create something amazing. When that happens, it gives me hope. While it’s very satisfying to cook for others, it’s also very liberating to not have to please anyone but myself. I can experiment, fail, try again, and succeed. Or not. It took some time to convince myself that I’m worth the effort, that I deserve a well-cooked meal as much as anyone. I can and should take the time to cook. To use nice dishes and enjoy a glass of wine. But also, to know that some days there’s no shame in a bowl of mac and cheese.

Fear of Dying Alone

There’s an episode of “Sex and the City, “where Miranda has just moved into a new apartment and one night begins to choke on Chinese food. In a panic, she runs from room to room, unable to breathe, unable to call anyone, totally helpless. Until she throws herself against the edge of a box yet to be unpacked, thus performing a self-Heimlich and dislodging the chicken. In tears, she calls one of her best friends, crying hysterically, “I almost died! I couldn’t breathe! I’m gonna die alone, Carrie!” Carrie assures her she isn’t going to die alone, but then her voice-over adds, “The truth is, I couldn’t be certain of that.”

I live alone. In 2020, as fear of the COVID pandemic began to ramp up and things began to shut down, the reality of my situation became crystal clear as I was mulling over how much food and supplies I would need to get by for two weeks, in the event I had to quarantine. How many cans of tuna? Frozen veggies? Pounds of hamburger? A mere inconvenience, I decided, and I could certainly survive on soup and peanut butter and jelly if I had to. But then, a more insidious question came to mind: What if I got sick?

A few years ago, a friend of mine who also lives alone, fell on the ice as she was doing the mundane chore of taking out the trash, and seriously injured herself to the point where she was unable to do anything but lie on the couch. Fortunately, she had a network of ready and able friends who brought her food, prepared meals, took out her trash, cleaned the litter box, and checked on her several times a day. We talked about that time, and she told me how scared she had been, lying in the driveway, without her phone, unable to drag herself to her house. A neighbor found her and helped her inside, but that was the point where she realized how vulnerable she was. And she didn’t like it.

I don’t like it, either. I like being independent, and I do everything I can to stay that way. But as everything began to shut down and the pandemic raged on, I knew that it was probably not a matter of “if” I got sick, but “when”. While others snuggled in at home with their families and significant others, I hunkered down and made contingency plans. I wrote out instructions to take with me in the event of having to go to the hospital, since no one would be with me to advocate or provide information. I compiled a notebook of passwords and other important information, letting my daughters know it existed. I made a will (that was fun). And, perhaps most importantly, I and my other solitary women friends made a pact to keep in close contact. We texted, phoned, video chatted on a regular basis, sometimes just to say, “How’s it going?” We created a network and provided our own safety nets. Although we didn’t have physical contact that others still enjoyed, we made certain that no one was alone.

I am making plans to move in the not-so-distant future, but to where, exactly, remains to be seen. I toy with the idea of moving to a place I’ve never been, to start over and create a new life for myself. But as attractive as that is, a small voice in my head whispers, “You aren’t young anymore. Do you really want to live alone, in a strange place? What if…?” That’s when I begin to think I should be more practical. Move closer to one of my daughters. Go back to the familiar. Or stay where I am. Safe. Predictable. It’s what my fear tells me, and if I’m not careful, I will begin to believe it. I will begin to close my life down and huddle in my safe zone, and this window of independence that I have will eventually close. “I want to live a life where my kids talk and worry about me,” I joked to a friend not long ago. “Then do it!” she replied, and we laughed, knowing that although we may live by ourselves, we most certainly are not alone.