Valentine’s Day Countdown by Elswhere

Late January:
Briefly consider creating homemade valentines with Mermaid Girl: red
cutout hearts, stickers, lacy doilies. Scrap idea after looking at
packed calendar and considering MG’s attention span and fine-motor
development; just writing names on prepackaged cards will be enough of
a project.

February 2, early evening: On a
pre-dinner trip to Fred Meyers, drop MG at playroom and scour the
Seasonal aisle for acceptable valentines. Push past towering piles of
Sc00by Doo, Disn3y Pr1incess, Sp1derman, assorted saccharine-sweet
themes, and seemingly endless varieties of Br4tz cards (3D hologram,
tattoo, naked–hah! just kidding!) to find one box of Eye Spy and one
relatively inoffensive set of He11o K1tty. Swing back to playroom and
present both boxes to MG for her choice. Surprise! (not) She chooses
Kitty. I briefly consider buying Eye Spy as well, just for backup, but
figure there are plenty of cards in just the one box.

February 2, after dinner:
Much excitement about the valentines. With our help, MG
enthusiastically compiles a list of everyone she wants to give them to:
friends from school, closest friends outside of school, baby cousin,
grandparents, Little Latke. I write up the list in block letters so she
can use it to write each recipient’s name herself. I perforate the
sheets and she sorts through the individual cards, cooing over all the
cute little pastel kitty designs and insisting on taking one to keep
for herself. No problem; there are 32 cards. We are rich in cards! And
in time. There’s more than a week to work on them. For once, we planned
ahead! We’re so good.

February 3-12: Valentines? What valentines? We have busy lives, you know.

February 13:

4 PM: RW and Mermaid Girl are out at a friend’s. I remember the valentines, then think, Well, she can work on them tonight.

5:45 PM:
I’m on the other phone with a friend when RW calls: they’re invited to
stay for dinner, do I mind? No, no, of course not, go ahead.

6:00 PM: Oh, sh*t! The valentines!

7:55 PM:
RW and Mermaid Girl return home. They’ve already thought about the
valentines: it’s no problem, MG will just write them while she eats her
dessert cookie.

8 PM: While MG engages in an
elaborate show of cookie-eating and milk-drinking, I read aloud an
abridged version of the list we came up with in the first heady flush
of planning: no grandparents, no cousins, just the school friends she
mentioned. We don’t have time to mess around. She chooses one friend. I
circle the name, help her figure out how to make the letters (it’s a
short name, thank goodness). She writes the name slowly and
painstakingly. She freezes when she gets to her own name: the pressure!
I make a dotted outline of the first letter for her–sometimes she gets
it backwards. I fold the card in half, she pulls a heart sticker off
the sheet to seal it, and we’re on to the next card. This will be just
fine.

8:15 PM: Three valentines down. First
crying meltdown of the evening, brought on when I absent-mindedly seal
one of the cards myself instead of letting MG do it. Fortunately, the
heart sticker comes off easily.

8:45 PM: Eight valentines down: "Write my name for me, Mommy! Please!" [curling up in my lap] "This is a lot of work for one little child!"

9:10 PM:
Thirteen valentines down. MG has a breakdown halfway through the
fourteenth. "You could stop, you know, you don’t have to do cards for
everyone," I say. "No!" she insists. "If he sees the other kids have
one, his feelings will be hurt!" We agree to take a short
sanity-restoring break while she puts on her pajamas.

9:15 PM:
RW and I try unsuccessfully to convince MG that she can stop after the
next card, since she doesn’t know most of the other kids that well. She
is affronted: "I know all the preschoolers!"

9:20 PM:
A pajama’ed Mermaid Girl and I come up with a plan: she will do one
more card in her own hand, for one of her best friends at school, and I
will address and sign the half-dozen others in her name after she tells
me who should get each one. Most of them are for younger kids who won’t
care as much who actually wrote them, anyway. And we’ll still have
plenty left to send belatedly to friends and relations.

9:30 PM:
With all cards addressed and signed by either Mermaid Girl or me, and
with RW on bedtime duty, I count up the completed valentines and
realize that the kids Mermaid Girl has listed constitute most of the
preschool, and that if only the few she didn’t mention are omitted they
may, in fact, feel bad. (The take-home folders are at adult height, so
it’s not like the kids would be looking through them. But still, if
almost everyone gets a valentine, the few who don’t might notice.)
Belatedly, I look through the preschool directory, and discover 10 kids
who were left off her list. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I count
the remaining He11o K1tty cards. There are eight left.

9:40 PM:
back at Fred Meyers, in the depleted Valentine’s aisle, which now
shares space with the newly-stocked Easter section. He11o Kitty is long
gone, as is Eye Spy. I survey the remaining boxes, muttering curses. A
giggly, carefree young couple in their mid-20’s swings by: she’s in the
cart, he’s pushing. They offer advice: "Well," she observes, "there’s
lots of Br4tz cards left." I shudder and make an involuntary noise.
"Yeah," she agrees. "I don’t like them either. They’re like little
prostitutes, aren’t they?"

10:10 PM: Mermaid
Girl is in bed. I show RW what I unearthed. We junk the sappy Pr3cious
Moments cards and go with the puppies-and-kittens themed box. I sort
the cards, looking for the vaguest, least-committing messages: "be
mine!" and "friends forever" cards don’t seem appropriate, considering
she doesn’t even know she’s giving these; I wouldn’t want to lead some
poor 3-year-old on…or am I being too literal?

10:30 PM:
Done. Valentines in a big envelope to take to MG’s school in the
morning. Leftover cards left on the table so we can continue the
torture tomorrow evening, with the belated cards for friends and
relations.

Elswhere and her partner, Renaissance Woman (RW),  live in Seattle with their 4-year-old daughter, Mermaid Girl. An honorary Brooklynite, she lived near the Gowanus projects back in 1989 and has been known to surf the PS 321 website just for kicks. This piece can also be found on her blog: Travels in Booland.