I’ve never really been a fan of St Valentine’s Day. That was even before I discovered that its origin lies in the martyrdom of not one, but at least two unfortunate chaps by the name of Valentine. Both are said to have met their untimely ends on 14 February, albeit some hundreds of years apart, which isn’t especially romantic in my opinion.
But that only confirms my view that Valentine’s Day is designed to disappoint. Growing up as a teenager in the 60s, Valentine’s cards tended to be unsigned. The premise was that love-lorn teens who had yet to express an interest in someone, would send a card, with or without a message, and this would somehow jump-start a romance. To this day, I still fail to understand how this would work, and why the prospective suitor wouldn’t simply sign his or her name and accelerate the process, but there you are.
At the time, I accepted the tradition and waited. My expectations were high, despite the fact that not a single boy in my village had shown the slightest hint of being interested in me. For that, I was assured by sympathetic friends, was the whole point: secret admirers are just that. They don’t make it obvious.
So, for several years in a row, I hurried downstairs on 14 February to find no expressions of undying love, or even of a vague interest. My friend Jill who, although only a year older, was at least six inches taller than me, received at least one every year. She had long skinny legs and long straight hair that made her look like Jean Shrimpton (Google her if in doubt) so I wasn’t terribly surprised. She would show her cards to me on the school bus, forcing me to engage in debate about who they might be from while exclaiming that she wouldn’t give the sender a second glance anyway, whoever they were.
And then, one year it happened. A yellow envelope with my name on the front was propped up against the Cornflakes packet when I came downstairs for breakfast. It was indeed a Valentine’s card, with all the usual hearts and flowers on the front and a single enigmatic question mark inside. My heart pounded. Who could it be from? Now I would have a card to show Jill and it wouldn’t matter that there was only one. Someone had taken the trouble to buy it and post it through my door. That was enough.
It wasn’t long before I put two and two together. My dad had already left for work, but my mum was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire Cat and hovering around me in a most peculiar manner. That may have been ignored if she had taken more trouble to disguise her handwriting, but I recognised the way she formed the J of my name and my bubble burst. I put the card in my school bag and set off without letting her know she was rumbled. I knew she was only trying to make me feel better, but I dropped the card in the bin by the bus stop and prepared myself to laugh and coo over whatever Jill would bring with her.
The next year, I had somehow managed to acquire a boyfriend and so I received a card, but I knew it was from him, so it lacked the magic I craved. In fact, I have never had a secret admirer, or, if I ever did, they had obviously lost interest by the time Valentine’s Day came around. These days, the passage of time, the onset of realistically low expectations and a hearty dose of cynicism mean I never even consider the possibility of a card of unknown origin dropping through my letterbox, but I still remember how it felt to be 15, with the future stretching out before me, unknown, exciting and rich with possibilities, romantic or otherwise.
Image Credits: Andrea Stockel/Public Domain Pictures net Public Domain 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.