Candace Walsh's Blog - Posts Tagged "february-14"
Valentines Excerpt from Licking the Spoon: 20something Angst, Ephron Medicine
This passage shares the experience many of us can relate to: missing an ex around Valentine's Day, even when you know that the breakup was for the best. At the end, I find something to call a Valentine from him, and it proves to be more valuable than chocolate, roses, jewelry, or lingerie. Really.
By February, I had not talked to Jack for four months. He sent me not one but three Christmas cards, filled with slightly manic, jolly, handwritten catch-up chat, but I didn’t call him. I had a big black sketchbook that I used as my catchall for Jack thoughts, images, or anything I wanted to send him or show him, things that reminded me of him with all of the subtlety of a knitting needle to the heart.
Valentine’s Day was difficult. I knew it was a stupid manufactured holiday, about as real as Betty Crocker, but I still felt like a seventh grader again, watching all the pretty, popular girls get roses and carnations. Only this time I was twenty-six, not twelve, and had yet to really have a good experience. My boyfriends never overlapped with February 14, except for Daniel, who handed me a necklace with a heart pendant, grumbling that he had to go to five stores to find it.
It was an easy opportunity to fall into a big, postbreakup, still-pining hole. I was unloved. Everyone else was being fêted, wined, dined, and made sweet love to. Not me. I was going to die an old spinster, in a garret overrun by cats. I was already in a fourth-floor walk-up with three cats. The only thing missing was a slanted ceiling.
I thought making beautiful handmade valentines and heart-shaped linzer torte cookies for all of my friends the week before the big day would karmically head this pity party off at the pass, but no, even though everyone loved them. I called my mother, looking to be cheered up, but she was also crying. I asked her, “Do you think it will ever get better?” She said, “Probably not.” Wow. The woman who had brought me into this world could hold out no hope for me. I ended that phone call rather quickly, as it was doing the opposite of what I had intended, and poured myself a glass of red wine.
My eyes fell on Heartburn, by Nora Ephron, the book Jack had given me months before, with a big red heart on the cover. Yes, it was in a pot over a fire and being stabbed by a devil with a pitchfork, but it was still a heart-decorated paper item from Jack to me, as close to a valentine as I would ever get. I sat down and began to read.
Free Valentines Cookies, baked by me!
Through 2/14, if you buy Licking the Spoon, (a great Valentines gift for literary lovers and friends) I will personally send a dozen heart-shaped chocolate and rose vanilla butter cookies to you or your gift recipient of choice. See the details here: http://www.lickingthespoonbook.com/co...
By February, I had not talked to Jack for four months. He sent me not one but three Christmas cards, filled with slightly manic, jolly, handwritten catch-up chat, but I didn’t call him. I had a big black sketchbook that I used as my catchall for Jack thoughts, images, or anything I wanted to send him or show him, things that reminded me of him with all of the subtlety of a knitting needle to the heart.
Valentine’s Day was difficult. I knew it was a stupid manufactured holiday, about as real as Betty Crocker, but I still felt like a seventh grader again, watching all the pretty, popular girls get roses and carnations. Only this time I was twenty-six, not twelve, and had yet to really have a good experience. My boyfriends never overlapped with February 14, except for Daniel, who handed me a necklace with a heart pendant, grumbling that he had to go to five stores to find it.
It was an easy opportunity to fall into a big, postbreakup, still-pining hole. I was unloved. Everyone else was being fêted, wined, dined, and made sweet love to. Not me. I was going to die an old spinster, in a garret overrun by cats. I was already in a fourth-floor walk-up with three cats. The only thing missing was a slanted ceiling.
I thought making beautiful handmade valentines and heart-shaped linzer torte cookies for all of my friends the week before the big day would karmically head this pity party off at the pass, but no, even though everyone loved them. I called my mother, looking to be cheered up, but she was also crying. I asked her, “Do you think it will ever get better?” She said, “Probably not.” Wow. The woman who had brought me into this world could hold out no hope for me. I ended that phone call rather quickly, as it was doing the opposite of what I had intended, and poured myself a glass of red wine.
My eyes fell on Heartburn, by Nora Ephron, the book Jack had given me months before, with a big red heart on the cover. Yes, it was in a pot over a fire and being stabbed by a devil with a pitchfork, but it was still a heart-decorated paper item from Jack to me, as close to a valentine as I would ever get. I sat down and began to read.
Free Valentines Cookies, baked by me!
Through 2/14, if you buy Licking the Spoon, (a great Valentines gift for literary lovers and friends) I will personally send a dozen heart-shaped chocolate and rose vanilla butter cookies to you or your gift recipient of choice. See the details here: http://www.lickingthespoonbook.com/co...
Getting Over Valentines
When I was a little girl, my father used to bring home big, antebellum-opulent heart-shaped valentines boxes for my mother and me. There was nothing fraught about Valentine’s Day back then; I was too young to be concerned with romantic gifts from admirers. I was only my father’s daughter, and his gesture seemed to comfortingly presage future displays of affection. It was also a happy surprise, something I didn’t expect and didn’t need in order to feel loved.
Fast forward to 1986. Picture this: a vast, boomy, subterranean junior-senior high school cafeteria. The air is redolent with the odors of cloyingly mingy mystery meat burgers and Love’s Baby Soft, and Charlie, borne aloft by floofy-haired girls sweeping by, buzzed on their own fleeting social significance. On Valentine’s Day, if you were a sought-after girl, you had armloads of carnations to carry around with you. And they made you stand out. You were wanted. You were desired. And it was quantifiable.
[Continue reading here:]
http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/art...
Fast forward to 1986. Picture this: a vast, boomy, subterranean junior-senior high school cafeteria. The air is redolent with the odors of cloyingly mingy mystery meat burgers and Love’s Baby Soft, and Charlie, borne aloft by floofy-haired girls sweeping by, buzzed on their own fleeting social significance. On Valentine’s Day, if you were a sought-after girl, you had armloads of carnations to carry around with you. And they made you stand out. You were wanted. You were desired. And it was quantifiable.
[Continue reading here:]
http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/art...
