Written by Tiane Davis
When I was in preschool, my mom taught me how to make cutout paper hearts. My 5-year-old brain decided it only made sense to cut out a bunch of pink and purple ones to give to my crush on Valentine’s Day. I know for a fact I never intended to give them to him, but I put them in my school folder anyway, trying to convince myself that I was brave enough.
When Valentine’s Day came around, my mom dropped me off at the school building, and I walked in with my little backpack. When I took my folder out, all of my hearts fell onto the floor in front of everyone. No one knew why I had made so many or for whom, but I was embarrassed. I played it off and pretended I had made them for myself. Truthfully, I buried them in the trash the minute I got home that day.
When I was in first grade, everyone knew what my favorite colors were. I wore pink and purple almost daily, exclusively drew with pink and purple crayons and eagerly suggested pink or purple chalk any time my teacher needed to pick a color to write on the blackboard. If anyone ever asked me what my favorite holiday was, I told them I loved Valentine’s day.
When I was in third grade, the set of Valentines I had picked out for the class Valentine’s Day party had two cards that were bigger than the rest. I addressed them to my two crushes, which made perfect sense to me at the time. Yes, I had two crushes — don’t lie to me and try to say you have never had two crushes at the same time. I made sure the two loves of my life got their noticeably large Valentine’s cards when the day arrived.
Of course, they both noticed.
“Oh! That’s so weird,” I said when one of them asked me why I had chosen to give them my best Valentines. “I have no idea how that happened.”
They knew I was lying, no doubt. Maybe I expected them to fight over me, or maybe I thought they would keep my little secret to themselves, but I forgot about it and dug through the Valentines I had received in hopes of finding something special for myself.
One year, my mom bought a poodle-shaped vanilla cake from Walmart for me on Valentine’s day. It looked like one of our dogs, and we thought it was funny that the more we ate of it, the less it looked like our miniature poodle.
None of these silly memories from my childhood really have anything in common except that they are related to Valentine’s Day. It is right next to Christmas on my list of “Most Memorable Holidays.”
Valentine’s Day is not my favorite holiday anymore, but it has always been a special day for me. I guess a crucial piece of information you need to know is that my birthday falls on this Day of Love. From a very young age, I was convinced that the reason I was born on Valentine’s Day was because I was the main character in everyone’s life. It made sense to me that Walmart and Dollar General put up decorations for my birthday because I just knew I was special compared to everyone else. I was in my own little world and paid no regard to anyone else in it.
The older I get, the less Valentine’s Day is a me day. It took me a while to realize it is much better celebrated with the people I love — whether romantically or platonically. No longer do I view hearts and hues of pink and red as extensions of myself, and no longer am I convinced the entire month of February is a Tiane celebration. I felt a strange ownership over the holiday for at least a decade, but since then, I have realized my birthday and Valentine’s Day are better treated as separate entities. Rather than waiting to receive birthday wishes, sharing such a holiday with my favorite people is a much happier way to spend the 14th of February.
