An envelope has been delivered to this office. Inside the envelope was a long note from Mike Holiday, a bag boy at the Treasure Island supermarket on Wells Street and author of the best-selling novel ”Bagtime.” Here are the contents of Mike Holiday`s message:
People at work have been noticing that I`ve been kind of glum during the last 10 days or so. I`ll stand at the end of my checkout counter at the Treasure Island and bag the groceries, but I don`t say much to anyone–not to the cashiers, not to my fellow bag boys, not to the customers.
A couple of friends have asked me if anything is wrong, and I`ve said no. But in truth, there is something wrong.
I didn`t get any Valentines this year. In fact, for the last three years I haven`t gotten any Valentines. Zero Valentines in three years.
Now I guess I shouldn`t worry about something like that. Valentines are for schoolkids, not for grown-ups. But Valentine`s Day has always been one of my favorite holidays, and I kind of miss being included.
Back when I was in grade school, I couldn`t wait for Valentine`s Day. The teacher hung up colored-paper packets with our names on them, and then everyone would go around the room and deliver their Valentines to the different packets–kind of like we were mailmen. And then we would take our own packets down from the wall, and go to our desks and see what was inside.
I always got such a kick out of that–all of the envelopes with ”Mike Holiday” written on the outside of them. I would go through them all. Sometimes a girl in the class would have gone to special trouble to hand-make a Valentine for me, and she would write something mushy on it, and it would make my day.
I suppose you never get as many Valentines as you did in grade school, but all through high school and college I at least got some Valentines every year. And forget that old saying about ”It`s better to give than to receive”; that may apply to some holidays, but not to Valentine`s Day. On Valentine`s Day, receiving isn`t everything; it`s the only thing.
When I was first married to Chay, we would go out of our way to shop for special Valentines with just the right messages on them. If we couldn`t find them in one store, we`d go to other stores until we found the Valentines that said precisely the right thing.
But as our marriage started to fall apart, so did our Valentine-buying habits. I remember the year that we both came home after work on Valentine`s Day, and we exchanged Valentines–and we had each done the same thing. At the last minute we had each taken regular pieces of white office paper, folded them in half, and on the front part written (in Bic pen) ”To my Valentine.” When you opened up the folded pieces of paper, we had each written on the inside, ”I love you,” and had signed our names.
I suppose that was better than nothing, but the unspoken fact remained that we had each thought of the Valentines as last-minute, necessary duties in our busy days. Not long after that we got divorced, and there were no more Valentines from Chay.
Still, for a number of years I got a fair amount of Valentines. I was spending some time with a number of women, and some of them took the time to send me cards on Valentine`s Day. The emotion when I got them was different, though; I felt surprised that the women would think to send me a Valentine. Valentines seemed somehow frivolous and outmoded in the age we were living in. And now it has come to this. Three years; no Valentines. I still go out with a few women–fewer and fewer, because as you might imagine, today`s upwardly mobile working women aren`t all that thrilled about going out with a bag boy. But the women I do see don`t send me Valentines; maybe they think Valentines are silly, or maybe they just think that to send a Valentine is to signal a commitment they`d rather not make.
On Valentine`s Day this year I went to my mailbox. There were a few bills and a magazine and a catalogue, but no Valentines. I was sort of expecting that.
So I went across the street to the drugstore, and I looked for the sweetest, gooiest Valentine I could find. There weren`t many left; on the night of Feb. 14 you won`t find a whole lot of Valentines still remaining in the card racks.
I did find one, though. I signed my name on it, and then took it back to my apartment above That Steak Joynt.
I opened the front door. Helen, my cat, was waiting for me.
”I`ve got something for you,” I said. I handed her the Valentine.
She sort of batted it around with her paws, and finally I knelt down and opened it for her. Maybe she was attracted to the bright colors, and maybe she wasn`t; all I know is that she looked at it for a few seconds and then trotted away.
So I picked the card up. I didn`t know what to do with it. I took it over to the living room table, opened it so that it would stand up on its own, and placed it there. At least there was a Valentine in my apartment, even if I had bought it myself.
Maybe next year.
