Today is Valentines Day. It is a day that causes the most seasoned lover severe anxiety.
I am accustomed to going to the neighborhood Hallmark store the weekend prior to the holiday to pick out a card for my wife. I am never alone. Only the married men procrastinate to the last couple of days. There are usually a dozen frantic guys jostling around a 4-foot-wide sections of cards marked “Wife”. Considering that the cards have been on display since the last tube of wrapping paper was snatched up during the frenzy of the Christmas clearance sale, the pickings are scarce. Those who can’t wedge their way to the front of the pack try to pull an end around and go to the section marked “Sweetheart”. Nice try. In addition to husbands, you are now competing against boyfriends as well. These guys are even more desperate because they waited too long to book a dinner reservation and are too cheap to spend $150 on roses.
Even had I planned things better, I would have found myself this morning without a Valentine’s Day card. Almost all of the local Hallmark stores were early victims to the COVID pandemic. Most of them closed shortly after Christmas. I am not surprised. I had noticed a significant drop off in foot traffic over the last several years. It seemed that the same over 65 crowd that I see at the jazz shows were the same ones still buying greeting cards. I suspect that younger generations are quite satisfied to receive a Valentine’s Day text. I am confident that 10 years from now card shops will see the same resurgence as record shops. There is something to be said for something tangible and not stored as a series of 1’s and 0’s in a virtual cloud.
For the first time since I was a runny-nosed 2nd grader, I find myself making my wife her Valentine’s Day card. Although I am feeling nostalgic for red construction paper, paper doilies and paste, this year’s card will be a little more contemporary.
This weeks Image of Hope sums up this past year. For the most part, it has been just the two of us, quarantined together, and looking off into an unknown future. I am lucky to spend these days with my Valentine for the last 37 years. Even without a box of those little candy hearts, you will always “Be Mine”.
