The Greatest Love of All

Regardless of the death of Whitney Houston this week, and of the date today, the title is mere smart@ssery, not anything which should be taken seriously.  I never have liked titles ("The Ax and the Vase" being easily and suprassingly the best experience with and inspiration for a title I've ever had; mostly, I am not very good at them), so I fall back a lot of lazy puns, many of which nobody outside my head could nor should even bother registering.  For me, the writing centers on the writing. Also, I am irretrievably and unrepentantly tacky.

Anyway.  So today is Valentine's day, and for a minute there I actually contemplated wearing red or something - then I realized I am not a teacher, nor a grade-school student, and I am free of these conventions.  Nerding out on Hallowe'en weekend I cop to unashamedly - but, as a general rule, when I head to my office, I do so without a lot of costuming involved.

There is one concession, though, and that is around my neck.

...


Mom called me this morning, comically-conspiratorially proclaiming how "YOUR STEPFATHER" is a terrible man, and how she is just absolutely going to kill him because he'd bought her a giant box of chocolates and she still has pounds to lose according to her recent weight loss program.

In the seven years (today) since they began dating, I have come to a pretty good relationship with mom's second husband, but I can admit that the attempt to put arms around "my stepfather" as someone I must claim a filial closeness with, as in the scenario where a mother conscripts her daughter into comic tales of revenge against a father figure ... didn't fit, for me.

The first time I put a coat on Sidney, she was so utterly confused at the sensation of a garment of any kind, she began hopping and twirling around the kitchen.  Not angry, not physically uncomfortable - but so profoundly confused at the presence of an object containing her, other than grabby old doggy-mommy, she proceeded to attempt to dance out of the feeling.

Yeah.  Like that.  I wasn't resentful of the "YOUR STEPFATHER" quip or anything - I just felt utter alienation from the concept of this man in anything remotely like my father's role.  I had a dad.  I like my stepfather - I love him, too.  But see him, in any way, AS a "father" at all?  No.  I was 38 before he arrived on the scene, and it took me years to even be able to use the term at all.  Putting him in certain scenarios, in certain positions, in my mind - probably never happen.


***

My dad hasn't been a part of V-day for a lot of years.  I think that switch actually got flipped, entirely by cruel accident, all at once, the year he died.  Mom gave me the birthday card he'd written before he died on Valentine's Day.  I didn't know what she was handing me - the pain was still SO new - and finding my father's hand on a funny little message almost knocked me flat.  She was a bit distracted herself, during those terrible days of brand new bereavement, but that was a lulu.

As may be clear from the progression noted - my birthday was relatively recently.  Its semi proximity to V-day usually gained me pink cakes as a kid (mom gave me the cake pans a few years back ... I've never used them).  If I had a party, particularly when I was "little", it was likely to be doily'd and red crepe papered.

I never minded this association with V-day, but it may be said that I've never much gravitated to the holiday, least of all for the past nine years, since that card.  I have memories of my First True Love sending me things for "Sweetest Day" (BRAND new, back in 1986) which was simply charming, but left me confused as I'd never heard of this ("holiday"/)marketing gimmick at that time.  I have a particularly scathing recollection of what a wretch I was one year with Beloved Ex - but that's the only V-day I can recall from my years with him, without basically sitting down and working out "how did my life go back then, again?" with a little actual dedication to memory.  I don't think I've spent many V-days with someone I loved doing anything stereotypically (or even uniquely) romantic; X sent me flowers a few years ago, which was nice, but he got seriously gypped by FTD or whomever it was, and the year after that it was an e-card with Hoops and YoYo.  (Strangely enough, that card was a link I was able to access for many years afterward, only finally going defunct some time in the past several months or so - in 2011; the card was by then probably five or six years old.)  I still own the vase from those flowers - and mom gave me a satin box once, I think may have been one of dad's last V-presents for her.  It's in a closet.  I know where.  But I don't, like, bring it out to decorate the house.  Nobody comes over here to speak of anyway - and Christmas trees going unseen can be depressing enough.  Decorating for Easter and V-day is a bit twee for me, and wouldn't probably be part of my personality even if people other than me and Sid *did* see the inside of our house much.

So pink and red, whatever - I don't hate other people for being with the ones they love on this day, and I don't find myself howling with emptiness because I love someone so far away, myself.  I made that choice - and he's certainly made his - and that is what it is.  It'd be stupid to get particularly self-involved about how Very Dreadfully Painful it is for me, as a perfectly intelligent, autonomous person, to dramatically whinge about ... um.  My choices.  Which I made.

I miss Erick.  Sure.  But I miss my dad too.  He's dead, though, and there's not much to be done there - certainly I feel no impulse to join him.  And I don't feel any to join E, either, as weird as people are about that.  'Tis what 'tis.  I learned YEARS ago, I don't need him in front of my face, in order to love him.  And what the love does for me has become almost independent of him (and he knows it).  I admire the man I know him to be, but it'd be pretty silly to look at my life as if it actually predicated on anything but my own free will.  Which I value, and he certainly has never impeded.


The one concession I have made to this day is in gold.

To this day, if I'm honest, I'm not even sure how she did this ... but some years ago, mom gave me the first gold necklace dad ever gave her as a present.  It was too small for her, but to give it to me was a profound parting for her, and a very great gift to me.  I remember back to when he gave it to her:  it was a big deal to us, and dad was VERY much an observer of the V-Day.  This gift was precious for them, and mom's "champagne taste" has always appreciated fine jewelry.  We weren't a wealthy family.  So his giving her a gift of gold - even if it hasn't come to inform my own needs (in love nor in presents) - was a memorable occasion.


Dad and mom were forever kissing, when we were kids.  I understood far later on just how ardent his love of her was - from the moment he met her, to the day he died.  Mom dressed for him even on his last day of life.  He was urgently, romantically, beautifully in love with her all their lives.  As a set of parents in whose home to grow up, the example only seems ever more breathtaking as I grow older.  Few people have ever been so blessed in love.  Few kids get to feel that, either.  And I grew up suffused in not only my family's love, but every day exposed to my dad's passionate, devoted, terribly tender love of my mom.  It just seemed like life was supposed to be that way.  It wasn't showy (though it was plenty demonstrative).  It wasn't dramatic.  But it was bone-deep, heartfelt, and wrackingly beautiful to remember now.

Who needs Valentine's to inspire thoughts about love, when you've seen someone love so unreservedly?

He loved his kids every bit as much.

But that was different.  The way he loved my mom, the older I grew, was the rarest of blessings any human can possibly offer.  It wasn't that it was unselfish.  It wasn't that it was idealistic.

It was that ... dad's heart was convicted.  Committed.  Unswerving, and so strong.

That heart beat, from the first moment he opened it to her, *for* her, for the rest of his days.

I only pray I could ever love so well.  Or have a heart ... so fine.

Dad was a world-beater.



I wore his gift to mom today.  With a pair of gold earrings I once bought for myself.  There is a balance there.  There are two generations of something deeper than gold, but which can be captured - manifested - in it.  Reflected in the gleam.  I touch this thin chain, and it is warm.  Gold isn't a thing I crave, nor am ... greedy ... for, not in itself.

But it is the physical reminder ... of the moment he put this around her neck.  And probably kissed her.  It's a reminder of what made me be.  It's a reminder that pink and red are not the point.  Valentine's isn't a color scheme, nor even a precious metal.  It's that kiss.  Those warm hands on a tiny clasp.  The embrace.  The holding each other ... because nothing - nothing - is finer, nothing is greater.


There are kids I know have never seen such a thing as my dad's love of my mom.  As it breaks my heart to know there are people who will never know him - it breaks my heart to know there are those who live life without that surrounding them.  Blessing, honor - and love.

Happy Valentine's.  Everyone.