Valentine — 2017

Let me call you “Sweetheart,” I’m in love with you.
Let me hear you whisper that you love me too.
Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true.
Let me call you “Sweetheart,” I’m in love with you.

I wonder how many million times this old song that was written in 1910, has been sung around campfires, the family piano and in buses of school kids on their way home from basketball games. Judy Garland and Bette Midler sang it in movies, and it was sung during the TV series “Downton Abbey.”
Chocolatiers and chocolate lovers rejoice! It’s time to stuff ourselves with candy from heart-shaped boxes, dine at ritzy restaurants, exchange romantic cards and exclaim over bouquets of flowers or gifts of red, eye-candy lingerie or undershorts imprinted with hearts or red lips. Then, once the one-day orgy of romance is over, it’s back to reality.
When I was a girl Valentine’s Day wasn’t such a big deal. In a grade school class we stuffed valentines for classmates in a fancily decorated box. The “popular” kids got the most cards. I didn’t get very many, but some little children “from the other side of the tracks” got none.
Valentine’s Day says a lot about the human condition. Romance requires two people, and if one isn’t part of a couple, Valentine’s Day heightens the feeling of missing out on something. Getting cards from parents or friends just isn’t the same as receiving one from a lover!
I enjoyed Bridget Jones’ Diary by Helen Fielding about the ups and downs in the life of a young, single Englishwoman. It’s a perceptive, poignant and hilarious commentary about the way many young, liberated women live these days. This is one of her diary entries:
Oh God. Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Why? Why? Why is entire world geared to make people not involved in romance feel stupid when everyone knows romance does not work anyway. Valentine’s Day purely commercial, cynical enterprise, anyway. Matter of supreme indifference to me.
Yeah, right! Then why does Valentine’s Day bounce Bridget’s emotions up and down like a yo-yo? Will she or will she not get any valentines? Probably not, but maybe she will. She obsesses about her weight, but has a cappuccino and chocolate croissants on the way to work on Valentine’s Day to cheer herself up. “Do not care about figure. Is no point as no one loves or cares about me.”
Even her detestable co-worker, Perpetua, who has a huge, bulbous backside has a bunch of flowers “the size of a sheep” on her desk. She bellows so that everyone in the office can hear, “Bridget, how many did you get?” “The whole thing is ridiculous and meaningless,” responds Bridget. “I knew you didn’t get any,” crows Perpetua.
Bridget is a modern woman who is free to enjoy her sexual self as males do, yet she and her girlfriends rage about men who won’t commit. The more things change, the more they stay the same. How about these lines from “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) in which he urges a hesitant woman to get on with it:
“The grave is a fine and private place
But none I think do there embrace!”
A grad school buddy told a story about his naughty youth when he gave his girlfriend her favorite record album. He said that he was well rewarded. On their next date she showed up naked under her coat! Did he eventually marry her? Of course not!
It’s been a long time since I suffered the ups and downs of being a singleton as Bridget calls them. Memories of the uncertainty, waiting for the telephone to ring, the “left-out” times make one glad that one isn’t young anymore! What a shame that youth is wasted on the young! No one can tell the Bridgets of the world anything! Indeed, humankind seems to have to learn everything for itself. Meanwhile, I rejoice in cocooning with my dear husband — my forever Valentine. wclarke@comcast.net