LOVE YOU

Today is Valentine's Day.  Just what does one do with that??

GOT LOVE?

I feel very confused and hollowed out by all the marketing frenzy around these holidays.  Blame it on the Dementors.

A week or so ago I was shopping at our local mega-supermarket and was drawn down the "seasonal" aisle--you know the one, with its steady rotation of colorfully wrapped candies, novelties and other proclamations of holiday fervor, all emanating a sickly sweet smell that drapes its cloying, oppressive scent within and without, and sucks all the joy from your soul.  The experience is a bit like meeting up with a sudden flock of Dementors in Harry Potter's world, I suppose, but worse, because it is so well-masked.  Under a guise of festivity and light and a promise of love and fulfillment, Valentine's Day rolls into February like a steam train shimmering with an expectation of something better and leaves most of us stranded at the station.  Ugh.  I don't even want to go there anymore.

But there I was, feeling some unseen, unsightly pull into the land of pink and red, standing amidst all the sugar-fuel for diabetes and obesity and cancers, and forgetting at once just what holiday it really was.  Expecting to see candy corn, or little foil Santas, I was overcome instead by endless bags of red-foiled chocolate hearts singing shiny and bright BUY ME, EAT ME, FEEL LOVED, and bags of conversation hearts stacked high for the Great Flood calling to me with their inane text-like messages, I-M SURE, MAD 4 U, U GO GIRL, and, sigh, E-MAIL ME.

That's when the Dementors came, hoods pulled over a faceless ghastliness, the swoosh of their cloaks announcing the hiss of cold fear that suddenly encircled me.  I could barely moved, but as I reached for a bag of candy hearts--UR MINE--and then another, NO WAY, I could feel all the sparkle and life being sucked out of me in frightening speed, the emptiness spreading, the anxiety taking over.  DON'T TELL.

I knew I had to get out of there fast.  SEE YA.  So lost in a supermarket was I that when I saw the egg coloring kit on the other side of the aisle, I actually breathed a sigh of relief and thought to myself, "Oh, yeah, at least we can dye eggs..." I took only a split second to register my mistake.  Wrong holiday.  LOL.  My head-spin complete, I stumbled to the end of the aisle to try to save my soul, but it was too late.  I can no longer shop happily.  My happiness mere fodder for the Dementor-led marketing blitz, I stumbled out towards the check out line with my two bags of conversation hearts, depressed and disenchanted.  GOOD BYE.

At this point in my life, Valentine's Day has merged with a whole host of other holidays that I enjoyed much more when my kids were young, and we had time together for creating handmade cards, baking treats, and reading picture books.  It was all about spending time together, and now, well, MISS YOU.  The holidays lurk out there like shadows from the past, old snapshots of happier days, songs fading in the background.  And yet, there's something about Valentine's Day that I always disliked: the excess of candy JUST ONE, the pressure to pair up, to flaunt what you've got, to make it all glossy and show-offy and suitable for the Valentine's Day showcase of lovers.  Ugh.  When my kids were little, I refused to buy the Sponge Bob Valentine's Day cards at the supermarket; instead, we spent hours losing ourselves in the painting and collage and cutting and pasting and creating, until, well, all the other kids were sending out Sponge Bob with candy attached and Valentine's Day became more insidiously-sweet than Halloween, and that's, I suppose, when I stopped being able to tell one holiday from another.

Nowadays, Valentine's Day merely taunts, reveals the faulty wiring of a memory that, thanks to the Tamoxifen, has seen better days, and reminds me that despite my best efforts to stay connected and true, the prodding fingers of loneliness often strip me down to an empty shell.  Still waiting for my train, I suppose. 

And there's the matter of  the dupe-marketing-machine and the collective crush of spirit and creativity and brings out my inner cynic.  I want to take no part in it and yet, I've wrapped up two cellophane bags of conversation hearts for my boys-- MY BOY, BE MINE-- bought them some really good chocolate, and made little cards for them out of pink construction paper and markers and a deep, simmering love that overflows for them and can't quite resist the Dementors.  Better work on my Patronus charm.  And be glad I wasn't shopping at (Lord) Wal-de-mart.  Might have been the end of me.

LOVE YOU