Mindful Living: Love, Chocolates, and Valentines Day

Valentines day makes me gag. Maybe it’s sour grapes because I’m single, but even when I was attached, all that red heart and ruffle stuff made me cross. Big flowery bows. Lurid boxes of chocolates. Red heart balloons. This stuff wasn’t love when I was in love, and isn’t love now that I’m not.

Call me a bad sport if you must, but if it’s love I seek, it won’t be found in a grocery store aisle of red candy. I want the real thing; maybe the thrill of slipping behind the pantry door for a stolen kiss. The magic of holding hands, a tiny spark of energy leaping back and forth between our fingers, unnoticed by the crowd. The jolt of finding a folded note stuck in the front door, “I love you” scrawled across it. Not the beribboned and high-calorie love of mid-February, but something with the mystery of a cold winter morning with sun sparkling on the frozen grass.

It is the winter of our discontent. Over mouthfuls of steaming mostaccioli my gal-pals and I chew over the dating thing. One friend hasn’t gone out in ten years; she’s waiting for true love to find her. “Dating around is a waste of time and money” she says. Maybe she’s right. Another friend tells me that she subscribes to the “half a loaf is better than no loaf” theory of love. If God sent her a “friendship with privileges” relationship, shouldn’t she accept it as the gift it is? On the other hand, how much bread can a girl really eat, and do all those half loaves leave any space for a whole loaf to rise?

Maybe, maybe not. With no rulebook, who’s to know how the cosmos handles love? If I were to give up, how exactly would that translate in terms of action, or inaction? And how would I know if it was one or the other anyway? If you were blessed with love once, should you just figure that’s your quota, count your blessings, and get on with something else? Is it really possible to give up all hope?

My friends and I look at each other, confused, each braving the cold in our own way. Having made it to our thirties means that we’ve all been through some love stuff already, and we know things aren’t much like the romance novels. Yet we all keep slogging through, keeping a small coal lit and warm for the next Valentines Day when chocolates might look more appealing. If it’s love we seek, perhaps it’s our love of ourselves that sustains us until the warmth of spring returns.

Copyright December, 1998

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