Valentines and Taming Tigers

I’m not really a fan of Valentine’s Day – never have been. Possibly it’s a case of sour grapes because I’ve never really been anybody’s valentine, except maybe once. It’s a holiday that has evolved to focus on “stuff” and equates love with roses or diamonds or candy. I can’t count the number of times in my practice that I sat with clients who were angry over what they considered to be their partner’s inadequate attempts at buying their love on Valentine’s Day, and tried to be non-judgmental and accepting of their feelings. The expectations tied up with this day, frankly, I find obscene.  

The other reason I eschew Valentine’s Day is all the darned sugar. Chocolate and more chocolate. Little hard sugar hearts with Be Mine and other endearments stamped on them. Red and pink M&M’s. Red and pink marshmallow hearts from the people who bring us Peeps at Easter.  Beautifully decorated valentine themed cupcakes at three bakeries I pass twice daily in Grand Central Terminal. This holiday represents another sugar gauntlet.  

  

My first memory of Valentine’s Day is from the first grade when my mom baked her highly addictive sour cream sugar cookies for my class. She frosted them in pink and neatly wrote each child’s name in white frosting on their own cookie. They were beautiful and I was very proud to deliver each one to the proper child when we had our party in the classroom. Back in those days, we exchanged valentines with each other, but the rule was that everybody had to receive a valentine. The teacher would send home a list of every child’s name in the class and whether or not you were friends with everyone, there was no exclusion allowed. I remember very carefully picking out valentines for my classmates from the box my mother bought for me, being sure to save the pretty ballerina card for Christine, who I thought was the prettiest girl in my class. And I secretly hoped that of all the valentines I would receive that day, one of them would be a ballerina. There was always one in every box of store bought valentines.     

Every year it was the same. I crossed my fingers and prayed that I would be the recipient of the ballerina card – or the princess card – or whatever card featured some character who was ultra-feminine and pretty. Somehow in my mind if that card was bestowed on me, it meant that the giver thought that I was ultra-feminine and pretty. I didn’t feel that way inside but looked for any external “evidence” I could get.

My second solid memory of Valentine’s Day was in 8^th grade when I sat at a card table set up in our dining room, listening to the Four Seasons sing Working My Way Back to You on the radio while I made valentines from red and pink construction paper, paper doilies, glitter, and stickers for my four best girl friends. There were no boys in the equation – well, except for Judy and her boy-next-door, but that didn’t quite count. He went to a different school so during our 8 - 3 school day, we could pretend he didn’t exist and Judy just belonged to us.  

In the 9^th grade, we had Mr. Greiner for social studies – global studies I think it was called. Mr. Greiner was a very tall and solid man and he was an avid sports fan. The first week of school, he gave us a current events pop quiz, as he was apt to do, and one of the questions was to name a professional basketball team. My answer? The Harlem Globetrotters. I mean, really, what did I know about basketball (or any sport, for that matter)!!! I’m sure he either laughed himself silly or just pegged me for a loser.

Mr. Greiner’s other chief characteristic was that he was mean. Physically mean.  He had a reputation for banging boys up and down the hallway against lockers. Bad boys, boys who mouthed off, or made him mad in some way.  It would happen and word about who was the latest victim passed through the halls like wild fire. Back then, teachers got away with that kind of behavior.  Even though I wasn’t a boy, and didn’t mouth off, I still feared Mr. Greiner. The sound of his booming voice made my heart do triple-flips and my knees need to sit.

What does this have to do with Valentine’s Day? Well, somehow, I think from our gym teacher who we believed was having a romance with him, my girlfriends and I found out that Mr. Greiner’s birthday was Valentine’s Day. By February, we had learned that one way to get on his good side was to produce obsessively neat and detailed maps of the countries we were studying. He would give the class a list of all the elements of a country that were to be included – rivers, lakes, mountains, anything of geological/geographical import – and order us to produce maps to scale. There seemed to be a direct correlation between the amount of time spent working on the maps in our local library and the magnitude of his grudging approval of our efforts as he handed them back in class.  We decided, my girlfriends and I, that we could further cement his approval (and perhaps a guarantee to never be the victims of the locker-bounce) by acknowledging his birthday. So on February 13 after school, we gathered in my mom’s kitchen and baked a heart-shaped birthday cake, which we frosted and decorated for Mr. Greiner, and took to school the next morning.

It was a successful undertaking. We studied his reaction carefully as we surprised him with the cake. We’d rarely seen Mr. Greiner smile, unless it was sadistically, and certainly had never heard him speak in anything but a booming and intimidating voice. But that day, he glowed a bit red from embarrassment, smiled broadly, and actually bowed to us as he said simply, “Thank you.” 

The tiger was tamed. An aggressor on your side is better than an aggressor on the opposite side.

Cranky & Irritable

I’m cranky and I’m irritable. There are no better words to describe me at this moment…. Those who are around me on a daily basis will concur that it is, in fact, not just this moment, but lately almost every moment. To them I apologize for my poor behavior, or more to the point, my sharp tongue and my impatience. I am truly trying to control myself but I am slip-sliding.

I’m not 100% sure why this is my state. But…..

I’ve been deeply, unshakably sad for months because someone I wanted to be in my life does not want me in theirs. The post-mortems of every last one of our communications have been endless as I’ve struggled to figure out exactly where I went wrong in misreading signals and misunderstanding intentions. Some of the attraction is the residue of a childhood yearning to be loved and valued by a narcissistic parent. There is also an element of identifying with the aggressor. More than once, I have become emotionally involved with someone who really frightens me with their potential for ferocity. If I can get the one who bites on my side, then perhaps I will not be bitten. But toxic once is toxic always.  

Sugar has been a challenge. I wrote a few weeks ago about an intention to cut down, to detox myself from that sweet drug. I admit that it’s been very, very difficult. I have managed to limit my consumption of ice cream to two teaspoons at a time, no more than once a day. I pay attention to it when I eat it. And I put the carton away without too much longing. When the freezer stock of ice cream is gone, I won’t buy any more.

Except for one birthday celebration, I have avoided sugary treats at work. But every day is a battle. I get to Grand Central Terminal in the evening and have a few minutes before my train. My attention strays to the Snickers, Milky Way, Almond Joy, and Peanut M&Ms displayed in Hudson News. I pass at least three bakeries in the terminal. Cannolis, my favorite fruit tarts, cupcakes decorated like art, cheesecake, black and white cookies – they entice me to come closer. I tell myself I don’t really want them, and then I admit I’m lying. I desperately want them. I imagine they will make me feel better, soothe whatever is hurting. I can also imagine some people saying, “Oh go ahead, stop depriving yourself, life is short.” And I understand their point. But they don’t understand mine. If I give into the craving, I take steps backwards. I will just have to start over and I need to keep going, to push through this. I need to get past the point, if it exists, of thinking, believing that I will feel better if I just consume some sugar-laden delicacy. Sugar is a short-term “fix.”

Winter is the anniversary of the deaths of both of my parents. My mom died five years ago in early January; my father seven years ago in mid-February. My mom was thirty years old when I was born. When she was alive, I always considered that thirty-year difference as a kind of insurance policy. Whatever age I was, I still had thirty years before I would be her age. But now she’s gone, the policy is no longer in effect.  I wonder whether I even have another 30 years. I’m not afraid to die, unless it’s violently. It’s just that there’s so much I still want to do, I find myself feeling panicked that I’ll run out of time.

I awaken in the morning and although I used to look forward to eating breakfast and having that first cup of coffee, all I want to do is turn over and bury myself in the blankets. I used to love my work. But the cumulative effects of too many and unrelenting demands over too long a period of time in an increasingly no-win situation, too few staff (the ones I do have are FABULOUS), no positive reinforcement and little awareness of what actually happens in “a day in the life” from most have taken their toll on my body and my spirit. Someone had the audacity to say maybe I could “use” people more creatively to do the work of my department. My tongue bled though my real desire was to draw blood. I could do that creatively.  

My best friend and I talk about the earliest possible time we can retire, question whether we could retire now and survive financially (probably not), and wonder if we have sufficient emotional stamina to make it until such time as we can. She is feeling about the same as I am these days.

My “heart mother” tells me about a place in Vermont that attracts artists and craftspeople. My daughter sends me a position announcement for a job in upstate New York that she thinks would be perfect for me. [Can’t we find some place where it’s not so darned cold for half the year?] I go on realtor.com and check out the cost of real estate in warmer places. I wonder whether there is a place where the cost of living is less than where I live but where there’s enough happening to keep my interest and my neighbors don’t all hold political and social views that are polar opposites of mine. I consider and reject various parts of the country for that reason, the terrain or the weather. I’m not afraid of uprooting myself, of going where I know no one. I’ve done that before. But I also know better than to believe in the geographical cure. And as if to caution me, there is an article on line this morning about moving where taxes are lower. The comments to the article are vehement in pointing out what citizens give up in services to get lower taxes. Sadly, there is no easy solution. 

Still something needs to change, whether it's circumstances or something inside me. A friend from my co-op, now happily retired, and I used to walk together in nice weather and talk about our upcoming “dreads” for each week. Once the “dreads” were isolated events…. Now they are full days.

I’ll figure it out. I’m pretty resourceful. I’ll stop the wheels from spinning before the tires blow out. I must.