I have a dozen roses in a vase next to my desk, even though
I told him not to bother. I have a child’s
homemade paper heart taped to my wall with four stick figures drawn in glitter
glue. Tomorrow morning I will wake up
next to someone who puts the toilet seat down, squashes the basement spiders, fills
my car up with gas, and takes the recycling out in slippers. I love him more than my grandmother’s poppy
seed bakery, which is pretty hard to top.
He and I will celebrate Valentine’s
Day with our two daughters, quietly, modestly, making banana pancakes
and frosting sugar cookies with basketball on in the background and snow
falling like cotton balls on the patio.
It will be a day that might so easily be taken for granted. A normal day. An unremarkably beige day. A day among many that could get lost in the
volume and the noise and the tempo. A
day that might otherwise be neglected like a lone glove lying in a parking
lot.
I am writing a letter of love to the woman who will not get
a Valentine this year or a candlelit dinner or a tender embrace in the
doorway. She will wake up and take a tentative
step into her daily nightmare. She will feed Frosted Mini-Wheats to her kids,
dress them in corduroy, and pull back their winter hats to kiss them goodbye on
their foreheads. She will watch from
behind the front curtain as they pile into their father’s car and the tears
will begin to burn her eyes. She will email
her lawyer, boil some water for tea, and stare at the picture on the fridge of
the four of them licking ice cream on the Cape last summer. She will count the days since he told her
about the affair…since she found out he was leaving and that everything was
over. She will count the days back to
the last day that seemed real. She will
take a shower and collapse into a heap on the tile until the water runs cold.
She will dry off, look at her face in the mirror and stare. Trying to recognize herself. Trying to hide herself.
She will close her eyes, yearning to conjure all the past Valentine’s
spent with her husband. Their first, in
college when he surprised her with chicken soup and Alka-Seltzer after she had
caught her roommate’s cold. The one
spent devouring a pepperoni pizza on the floor and Ben & Jerry’s with a
spatula a day after they had moved. The
year he proposed. And after a while, overcome with a sudden
parasitic rage, she will scream and throw her hair dryer across the room and tear
all the towels from the linen closet. She will curl up on the bed and sob
ferociously and wildly until the dog nuzzles his way into the room and they can
whimper together with her hand on his fur.
This is my Valentine to the woman who doesn’t feel loveable
this year. To let her know she is not to
blame. That she is strong. That she is brave. That she is entirely worthy.
This is my Valentine to the woman in survival mode. Who is gutted and stripped, but manages to clench
her grief and tuck her kids in at night and waits to cry until it can be
silenced by her pillow.
This is my Valentine to the woman wrestling with a new
reality. Grappling with the fact her
life went off a cliff and she is still falling, waiting to hit bottom, bracing
for the impacts yet to come. A woman
whose wounds are not only bleeding from loss but salted with betrayal.
This is my Valentine to the woman slogging through the muck,
slowly, gradually, gruelingly. Sometimes
falling over. Sometimes still and stationary,
but still doing it. This is to the woman
who keeps on getting up.
This is my Valentine to the woman who cannot yet see through
the fog or master the minefield, but who will come out the other side. A woman who will ascend this colossal
mountain of misery and be able to look down one day and be humbled by the
enormity of what she conquered.
This is my Valentine to the woman who will heal. Who will be forever changed, but who, in
time, will emerge whole, experience levity again, and bask in the forgotten fragrance
of her own laugh.
This is my Valentine to the woman who reminded me how tenderly
you must covet a family composed of glitter and glue. A woman who reminded me how euphoric beige
can be after you experience what it’s like to be in the dark.
This is my Valentine to the woman who needs to know she is
never alone.
