A Valentine’s Day enthusiast.
What do you get when you cross a practical, sensitive, and
often anxious little boy with a purely mathermatical mind that finds artwork stressful?
A Valentine’s Day Grinch.
But public school is unforgiving. You are not given the choice of whether or
not to participate in your class’s upcoming Valentine’s Day exchange. Oh no…there’s nothing meaningful or spontaneous
in today’s approach to Valentine’s Day.
Instead parents are now sent a pre-emptive text containing each and
every kid’s name in the class as well as instructions on what to bring for
snack that day.
I had no choice but to engage in the daunting task of helping
each of my diversely opposite children to channel their inner selves into the
spirit of Valentine’s Day.
Where does one turn for such an undertaking?
Dollarama.
I got a stack of blank foam hearts, stickers, markers and pipe
cleaners (??) for Mia and Dollar store pre-done Valentine’s cards (with puns on
the front) for Toby. They even had the
TO and FROM part done. All he had to do
was fill in TWO NAMES (one of which was his own).
On Saturday morning we set to work.
Mia took right to it.
She insisted on individualizing each heart for her friends and carefully
selected the colour scheme and personalized stickers that would be “just right”
for each one. She even remembered some
of her friends in other classes, her teachers, and her bus driver…. it went on
and on. She never wavered. Mia was BORN for Valentine’s Day crafting.
Toby, on the other hand. ...
At first he got a good chuckle out of the humorous
cards. “I hippo you’ll be my Valentine”
with a hippopotamus on the front and “You MOOOO-ve me, Valentine” with a Cow on
the front seemed pretty innocuous to me.
Except if you’re analytical and slightly prone to overthinking
things. Then it creates a wee bit of a
problem.
“I don’t get it.” Toby said
“Do I actually REALLY have to want someone to be my Valentine if I give
them one that says I Hippo that they will be my Valentine?”
This is where my efforts to instil gender equality have
backfired. Where once I could have
suggested he just give the (?overly suggestive) hippo card to one of the boys
in his class, this suggestion was now met with an incredulous look, an eye roll
and a headband onto his desk.
Unbeknownst to me, Toby’s benign Hippo message could be misinterpreted
by both male AND female students in his class.
According to my accurate over thinker, of course.
The most DIFFICULT of cards turned out to be the unabashed MERMAID card that had a beautiful mermaid on the front with the very forward message, “I LOVE YOU, VALENTINE” on it.
Toby almost fell off his stool when he read it. (And I thought we had a problem with the
Hippo one….)
“Ooh, TOBY!” his unhelpful sister exclaimed as she picked
the card up off of the floor, “Who are you going to give THIS one to?”
“NO ONE!” Toby said with his head still in his arms. “NO one.”
“But she’s so pretty!” Mia lamented, saddened by this
pointless waste of such a beautiful card.
I grabbed it out of her hands before she could make her
anxious brother even more of a wreck.
“It’s OK, Toby” I reassured him, “this is why I bought you
TWO packages – you don’t have to use them all!”
I gave myself a secret pat on the back for forking out the extra $2 for
the second pack at the dollar store. Do
I know my child or do I know my child?
You would think that writing the recipients name and his own
name on 20 cards would be EASY, but his sister, who handmade each and every card
herself, was finished hours before him and was off playing with her friends
while Toby sat there wondering if his friend Liam or Ryan would find the “Have
a Doggone Good Valentine’s Day” card (with the…you got it…dog on the front)
funnier.
I can happily report that eventually, both children
completed the daunting task of Valentine’s card making and as they headed off
to school today, their backpacks heavy with the appropriate number of classroom
Valentine’s cards to be delivered, I heaved a sigh of relief knowing that
another year had gone by without blowing my cover of being a sub par
parent.
Now, as you can gather from this post, I am not one for Hallmark
occasions. I take no joy in obligatory
celebrations that are merely a make work project for us overtired parents. But I will admit to one thing that I learned
this year….
Hidden at the bottom of their neatly stacked mommy enforced
school Valentine’s cards, I found something that changed my mind.
At the bottom of Mia’s cards, I found the piece of heart
shaped cardboard that was part of the foam hearts packaging. On it she had attached a few modestly placed
stickers and had written, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Mia, Love Toby xoxo”. When I asked her about this she said quite
matter-of-factly “Well, I know Toby doesn’t love to make Valentine’s cards so I
thought I’d just make one for myself so he doesn’t have to.”
And at the bottom of Toby’s pile?
You got it. The
Mermaid Valentine.
To: Mia
From: Toby
He is a man of few words.
But he isn’t afraid to show that when it comes right down to it, the
only girl he truly loves is his little sister.
So there you have it.
Right in the midst of our busy lives, of my complaints about the
phoniness of red pink and white day, at a time when I was least expecting or
looking for it…I found two acts of true love that made my heart stop.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Everyone.
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