The romance of valentine's day must surely extend into every day...into our vast array of memories. I remember skipping along a lane with drifting apple blossoms, eating an ice cream cone and holding my daddy's big hand. I was four. It wasn't valentine's day, but it was wonderful to me.
I loved hot blackberry jam and my overworked Mama would get up and make it for me on a school morning with hot biscuits...it wasn't valentine's day but it was love to me.
I was sick with the flu and uncle Holly walked out of the holler and up to Claude Blair's store and then down to our house in the Scott Holler to bring me a big box of valentine candy. It was valentine's day and it was the simplicity of an old man's love for his niece who had grown up sheltered by her family's love. He was a simple man who could not read or write but he knew devotion.
I was a little girl of five and my brother found a wild baby rabbit and brought it home to me. We raised it. It wasn't valentines day but it was love.
Granny was dead. I was thirteen. They brought her home for the night and for her funeral. Pap and I sat together all night. Everyone else fell asleep. I drifted off and woke up to see him standing beside the coffin, a big handkerchief in his gnarled old hands, tears flowing down his cheeks. 'I loved her more than anything on earth,' he said. I took his hand in mine and there in the illumination of a lantern...they had no electricity; we cried together. It was not valentine's day but it was love. She was born on valentine's day.
He brought me a bunch of violets to plant in my yard...I missed the wild violets rambling all over the river banks and mountainsides in Ky. And my military husband knew my loneliness for Kentucky, and my love for flowers. It wasn't valentines day, but it was love. They grew wild and free in my yard and when he died they were blooming as I cried. It was love, but it wasn't valentines day.
Little grubby hands picked bunches of wild dandelion flowers, and sometimes my cherished rosé buds and brought them to me...it wasn't valentine's day, but it was love.
The day after tomorrow the candy will be gone and the roses will fade, and it won't be valentines day, but there will be love to turn into memories. Cherish the moments, the romance of simplicity, the pure romance of everyday life in all its glory. Happy Valentine's Day, tomorrow and the other tomorrow's...the simple days, those days of making memories from moments.
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