not a milestone, but a moment.

It is the night before another Valentine’s Day (a holiday permanently marked in our family’s memory, as it coincides with the death of Norma Lenore, my grandmother).

Six years ago, we wore red to her funeral, laughed and cried over the special experiences we shared with her, and I celebrated my 25^th year on this planet.

Tomorrow we will pay our respects, reach out to one another, say our “ I love you’s”, and reflect in our individual ways—remembering those who we have loved and lost, and those who we continue to hold close.

There’s snow in the forecast for the next few days, and though it is my night off from work, I won’t be braving the slick roads, freezing rain and snow drifts, to see a movie or have a dinner out. Instead, my Valentine sits at the kitchen table deciphering the philosophy of Marx, sipping on our shared bottle of wine (and eyeing the cupcakes I just frosted), as I listen to the whir of the extra space heater, the intermittent wind, and think about how much has happened since Norma’s passing.

There are little things that remind me of her daily. Like, just the other evening, I was flipping through a book of poetry and out fell a couple of photographs and the prayer card I kept from the services. Place markers for this poem:

Sacred Heart

Lee Ellen Briccetti

Even as a girl I knew the heart was not a valentine;

it was wet, like a leopard frog on a lily pad;

like a lily pad it had long tube roots

anchoring it in place.

And smaller roots too, like the lupine and marigold

and bleeding hearts’ roots I traced with my finger

while transplanting in the garden.

I believed Jesus had a thousand bloody hearts

planted in our flowerbeds beneath the pink flowers;

they could see us through the ground.

I had a book about a girl who lived in the earth

near the tree roots, who cut off her finger

and used it as a key. I wondered if I could love like that.

I studied the painting of His chest peeled back

to show light around the Sacred Heart.         

And in the bedroom at my grandmother’s where I slept

Against the tree shadows, I was the spirit

inside the room’s heart, and my life was inside me

like something that could leave quietly through the window.

I didn’t fall for a man who makes a ton of money, like Norma would jokingly advise my sisters and I to do when she was alive. But I did fall for a good man, who doesn’t seem fazed by how sentimental I get, emotional at times, and occasionally obsessed with morbid things like subtle violence and death. If she was around still, she would probably comment on how handsome he is (and of course, I would have to agree). And also, she would ask if he makes me laugh (because she loved to laugh—big belly laughs at the table, occasionally dripping some sort of sauce of her nice clothes, which would just make us laugh harder).

On Monday, I turn 31. And such a weird age it is to process, because it falls into that “just another day” category, as Valentine’s Day once did for me. There will be no milestone passed. No bar hopping or major celebratory event will take place. No piñatas or clowns or pin the tail on the donkey, either (Sorry Mom. Though, you could probably still swing it with Molly).  

I suspect that maybe this is a sign I’ve embraced adulthood, that my idea of a perfect birthday is renting a room in a quaint B&B in some small Northern town, and doing exactly the same thing that me and my Valentine are doing right this minute: simply, enjoying each other’s company, our casual goofiness, and the love we have for one another.

So, to end this thought, I would like to say:  enjoy the holiday—not through the giving and receiving of material gifts (the diabetic, fabricated, wasteful stuff). But through the giving and receiving of mutual respect. Compassion. And of course, that beautiful, magical, red-stained love.