Valentine’s Day Takes on New Meaning Now That I’m a Single Mom

Oh Valentine’s Day…such an interesting holiday.  If my memory (and my quick Google search) serves me correctly, it is a holiday with an origin that remains a bit difficult to pin down. 

From what I can tell, there are a few possibilities for the root of the holiday.  It either has something to do with banning Roman soldiers from getting married and then a priest by the name of Valentine marrying them, and being put to death because of it.  Or, Valentine being imprisoned for something, and then falling in love with his jailor’s daughter, and going on to send the first Valentine greeting signed “From Your Valentine” – before being put to death.  And February 14 may or may not be a commemoration of his death, or maybe his burial.

So let me sum this up for you: The foundation of Valentine’s Day is love – that is under a layer of torture and death. 

Yep.  Sounds about right.  Not much has changed since the 3^rd Century.

Kidding.  Well sort of. 

When I was single in my B.B. days (before-baby) I would start obsessing on January 1, about how I was going pull off acting completely unaffected by my single status on Valentine’s Day.  Why January 1?  Well that was right after I was done pretending that I was completely unaffected about being single on New Year’s Eve. 

I would float on my cloud of coolness walking around saying things like, “Valentine’s Day is overrated…I don’t even like chocolates…who needs a holiday to force someone to show you how much they care?...Pish…Silly Valentine’s Day.”

And in between my aloof comments, I would be begging my girlfriends to join me at my favorite pub for one too many cocktails so we could all pretend together like we were unaffected by being single on a day that is all about love. 

And here’s the thing, even the happiest single people I know, don’t really care to embrace a holiday that can – at times – make them feel like they are the only one’s that haven’t joined the love parade.  It’s like a big reminder of what you don’t have.

Well F-that.  I am done with the Sad Sally routine.

Instead, I have decided to honor my best friend’s mom, who passed away just before Valentine’s Day last year.  Her mom loved the holiday, and took great care to buy wonderful cards, and send them out to everyone she cared about – so they knew how loved they are.  Before she died, she had managed to buy the cards, but never was able to finish sending them out– so my friend did so after she passed.  My friend wanted to make sure that all of those people knew how much her mom cared.

And with that in mind, I made a nice long list of people for Ellie to make Valentine’s Day cards for.  So all of them can see how much Ellie and I care.  And since Ellie is only one-year-old and can’t handle paint and construction paper all on her own yet – she and the nanny have been tackling the craft project while I am at work. 

Life is too short to do anything other than focus on the love.