On Valentine’s Day

It's a gray morning after a fitful night but Valentine's Day needs to be acknowledged. I realize it's tacky and commercial and there are weightier things to talk about, but I'm remembering how the girls at the middle school used to dress in pink and candy appeared on every desk and the giggles seemed to escalate. I'm thinking of how balloons and red roses sprouted up in the grocery stores and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates flanked the register at Long's.

Last year I was one of only two or three thousand women who received Ted Kooser's annual Valentine's poem on a postcard with a little red heart in the corner, the final one in the series, and yesterday a hand-made Valentine from Oralee arrived in the mail a day early.

Even my computer has gotten sentimental: this morning there was an email from a very dear friend in honor of the day, and I discovered that my daughter had posted something sweet and funny on her blog.

Now I'm listening to a Neil Young song that has nothing to do with Valentine's Day, but it's filled with love and yearning. Why fight it?