Since the beginning of my memory, my mother has created (and encouraged me to create) fabulous Valentine's Day cards. In my Westerville home, the most critical component of Valentine's Day is the hand made card. Each year, my mom pulls out a tin full of crinkled tinfoil candy wrappers, torn-out magazine graphics, and scraps of heart themed wrapping paper, and almost obligatorily we settle into a night of card making. In my collegiate absence, she even sent me a packet of supplies to do my yearly duty.
Valentine's day cards are for friends, family, bus drivers, school secretaries, sometimes loves, but mostly the usual crew. They are for the people we forget to shower with love when wrapped up in our usual routines. They are for the people who help us live our every-days. My mother never emphasized the lovey-dovey of Valentine's Day (or much else) during our yearly preparation. I should remember to thank her for that. In her home, Valentine's-Card-Love is much deeper than stuffed animals and chocolate; it is a habitual love, a love of the mundane.
In a crafty (no pun intended...) way, my mother taught me that real love has a routine element; real love continues when the butterflies and fireworks wear off. To really love is to practice treating those in your life with respect and compassion, to remember to thank them and tell them how important they are to your life. My mom's Valentine's Day cards are just that, they are a simple "Thank you. I am grateful and I am here with you and because of you."
This Valentine's Day, go ahead and send some over-the-top admiration or turn up the Miles Davis, but also, remember to send some love to the people who make your life a little easier each day. Here is a peak at what I am sending out this year [Please excuse the horrible white balance. Remember that post about living like a vagabond? These are taken with my iphone because my Canon is at another one of my 600 homes]:
not sure how i missed these before, but just saw them and like them and like you.
ReplyDeletet