The President took the First Lady out to dinner at the restaurant down the street from me. My friend who works in a different restaurant kitchen just called me to say that the entire evening was crazy and now he's absolutely exhausted. Clearly the business stimulus aspect of the holiday is working
"Leave it be", I tell myself, despite the annoying level of crass commercial promotionalism of network news and news by-products that appear across my television screen. This morning GMA featured a surprise televised marriage proposal from a New Jersey elementary school. Cynical in both nature and experience, my first thought when I see these televised proposals is how fast could I murder my beloved were he ever to put me in such a situation. I'm waiting for someone to say "no" to the implied emotional blackmail of such a public airing of what should be a private moment. I imagine I'll be waiting a long time.
Many years ago, while still a student in graduate school, I made the observation in a history seminar that commercialism rarely invents new cultural traditions, rather it takes already existing ones and plays with their meanings. We had been talking about the things that commercial culture "invented". But inventing and reconfiguring are two very different cultural processes. Maybe if I dig deep enough underneath all the promotionalism, I'll find something genuine in the sentiments. Cynical, indeed, but nonetheless optimistic, too.
The commercial versions of love and romance, sex and coupling that contemporary Valentine's Day presents us with, can never, of course, comprise the full breadth of those emotions or experiences. But why do so many people accept it the easy, pre-fabricated solutions?
Fake day, genuine sentiment. So why must it always be so truncated in its presentation? Single people often rue the day, reporting anxiety or self doubts, at least that's what we're told. I'm ten years single this year, and a large portion of that also celibate. I couldn't possibly offer anything intelligent to say about our national orgy of coupling. Except to note that that is precisely what it is.
At my office there are several dutiful thoughtful husbands and boyfriends as more than a handful of my colleagues were recipients of lovely floral deliveries today. I note the thoughtfulness because of course, sending the bouquets to the office lets all the other women in the office know just how thoughtful a spouse or boyfriend one has. The audience for the gift in these cases is nearly as important as the gift itself. The message becomes not simply, “I love you”, but rather “You are loved where others may not be and now all can see it”. That makes it less an expression of a genuinely lovely sentiment and more a tally in some strange emotional scorecard. And, as both commercial and still latently patriarchal cultures are wont to do, it pits folks (in many cases women, but not always just) against each other.
Here’s the funny thing. Valentine’s Day doesn’t really cause me to lament my single status. It nearly always leads me to ponder it, since that’s unavoidable on such a day. Rather Valentine’s Day leads me to be sad about the loss of my mother, for always in my life, no matter what the status of my sex/love/intimate life, until 12 years ago I would always receive a Valentine from my mother. She’s no longer here to do that. And it is that love and its loss that is the genuine sentiment I carry with me on this day.