Happy Valentines Day!

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1pen's avatar
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Today is my favourite holiday.

I am one of those rare animals who loves Valentines Day.  I always have. Ever since I was a little girl.  And so has my mother.  When I was little she was one of those rare individuals who decorated for the holiday as though it were as important as any other.  There was none of the commercialization to it.  Valentines Day required handmade cards (at creating which my father was a genius), homemade treats, small little presents hidden away in keepsake boxes, fresh flowers, writing poetry, and otherwise celebrating the entire notion of love.   Because it was my favourite holiday, one year my mother gave me quite possibly the best gift I'd ever received, which was a trip to the pound (they still had "pounds" back then) to pick out my very first pet.  I remember arriving at that dismal place...all green cinderblock and cement floors, and animals whining and crying, their noses pressed up against the grates of their pens.  I was horrified to see so many.  I asked to see which animals they intended to put down and I was led to a small narrow rectangular room in the back, that (just like in the movies) had a door that led to the room where they euthanized them. In that room, on the bottom shelf of cages was a small cage bursting with a dozen or so small orange tabby kittens.  Being only five years of age at the time, I opened the lock to the pen and the cage burst open with small little kittens running everywhere, but one, sickly and small, crawled out of the cage, onto my lap, and curled there quite content.  I promptly knew she was mine.  As we rode home in the car, we thought of names.  

She was small, all bones, and very sick and the odds of her surviving were very low. My mother excused me from school for two weeks (yes, two weeks...my family consistently ignored any concept of absence...we were known to disappear to some part of the world for months at a time...and the schools back then didn't care...I was the best student they had anyway) she and I sat on the floor with this kitten wrapped in a towel and nursed her to back health. In the end, the kitten became my feline companion of fifteen years despite having a deformed heart that should have cost her her life at the start of it.  By the time I had gone to college and married, she finally suffered that long coming heart attack and passed.  But she was my Valentine and every year my gratitude to her, my mother and father, for teaching me what love is all about, is renewed.  

Because that, to me at least, is what the holiday has always been about.  Love and caring. With loved ones. With lovers. An entire lifetime of it. And never being ashamed to admit it.  I frankly do not care about the commercialization or the notion that it belongs to those with lovers.  I do not care that there is no real historical basis for it connecting it to a Valentinius.  Any reason to celebrate love, and all varieties of love, is a happy day for me.   I never was one of those girls who got a mystery flower while sitting in class during high school, but I've loved the holiday the whole of my life anyway and I always will.

Happy Valentines Day, my friends.  Here's to every opportunity to love, and love our whole lives, that we are presented with...may we embrace and cherish every single one of them.

Reposting this today from my journal back in 2012. Because it still rings true for me.
© 2012 - 2024 1pen
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Exillior's avatar
That was beautiful to read. Thank you so much for sharing this with us!