Valentine’s Day: Say it with chickens

At some point in the relationship, every man I’ve ever gone out with has looked at me sadly and concluded, “You aren’t very romantic, are you?”

I am not. I am loving and funny and loyal. But romance has never been my thing.

Hearts and flowers? Strolling hand-in-hand? Candlelit dinners for two?

No thanks.

Love at first sight? Not for me.

On the other hand, the very first time my sister met her future husband, she knew that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. She was just 18.

Larry was, undeniably, a catch. Nice. Adorable. Sane. Stable. Jewish. Not to mention Harvard pre-med.

But still …

“You’re so young!” I told my sister. “Have fun! Shop around.”

“I don’t need to shop around,” she said.

Apparently not. They just celebrated their 32nd wedding anniversary.

This is a fabulous achievement, and they’re my favorite married couple. And yet, going through life yoked to another person like that, no matter how wonderful that person might be, is my personal idea of hell.

I’ve always been this way.

When the other little girls were drawing pictures of bridal gowns in their school notebooks and dreaming about Mr. Right, my dream was to grow up, live by myself in a fabulous Manhattan penthouse, and write books. (Except during my Emma Peel “Avengers” phase, when I wanted to grow up, chase bad guys with a debonair partner, and effortlessly throw people who got in my way across the room.)

Here’s how un-romantic I was: After “Snow White” aired on “The Wonderful World of Disney” and all my 12-year-old pals were singing “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” I refashioned the lyrics so they’d apply to me.

“Someday my prince will come,” I sang, “and I’ll tell him to f#@& himself.”

Be mine

Despite all of this, as a child I adored Valentine’s Day.

Every year my sister and I would spend hours crafting handmade valentines for every kid in class from every art supply we could get our hands on. Construction paper. Glitter. Ribbons. Doilies. Stamps. Stickers.

Each was a personalized work of art. If your pal Suzie loved Barbies, you’d draw them on her valentine. Patty was into horses? You’d festoon her valentine with Palomino stickers. Doug, who loved Mad magazine, got an Alfred E. Neuman valentine. For our very best friends we composed poems of the “Roses are red/violets are blue” variety.

On Valentine’s Day the class took turns going around the room delivering valentines to the shoebox “mailboxes” on each desk. Then we opened them.

What a great moment! It was nothing but treasure. Glittering store-bought cards. Elaborately crafted handmade cards. Vintage old-timey valentines. Dozens of little heart-shaped candies. Poems and notes and messages from your best friends. Sprinkle-covered heart-shaped cookies. Pink-iced cupcakes.

It was something I looked forward to all year. But it wasn’t about romance. What did we know about romance? We were in elementary school. For us, it was a celebration of friendship.

When we hit junior high, Valentine’s Day stopped being about friendship and began being about True Love. And I stopped caring about it.

True love

Mark, the man in my life, is more romantic than I am. (Everyone is.) After years of patiently waiting for me to come around, he has come to realize that, as wonderful as he is, I’m never going to wake up one morning, look deeply into his eyes, and start singing “You Are So Beautiful to Me.”

But we do exchange tokens of our affection on Valentine’s Day.

Because he’s an artist, and bookish, I’ll get him a pricey art book I know he wants but is too frugal to buy himself.

For years, he gave me a Whitman’s Sampler each Valentine’s Day, until I finally confessed that I don’t actually like Whitman’s Samplers. “I save them until the candy gets stale,” I told him. “Then I throw them out.”

So now he makes me a gift — a painting, a collage, or a hand-crafted, three-dimensional piece. Something creative and unique, just for me.

Which, come to think of it, is a lot like those handmade valentines I so loved as a kid.

So, to a certain extent, with Mark I’ve come full circle.

So fine

And yet I sometimes think about trying to reclaim the joy I used to feel on Valentine’s Day. Why does it have to be exclusively about Romantic Love? Why can’t those of us who just aren’t into that emotion (or who are between partners) be inspired by our grade-school selves and celebrate the friends we love?

Not that I plan to go around handing out glittery handmade construction paper hearts to all my pals.

Although, perhaps I should.

I’m thinking of going with something even more outside the box. I’ve consulted the Heifer International website, and I see that I can express my appreciation for our friendship on this special day by purchasing a llama for a third-world family in your name.

Or, if we’re not quite that close, how about a hen?

We non-romantic types can start a new Valentine’s Day tradition! While others exchange romantic gifts and walk hand-in-hand on a moonlit beach, the rest of us can say, “Thank God for our friends,” and exchange celebratory poultry.

Roses are redviolets are blueI’m so glad we’re friendshere’s a chicken for you!

Happy Valentine’s Day.

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Roz Warren‘s work appears in The New York Times and The Funny Times. This essay was originally published at Women’s Voices for Change.