Valentine’s Day will be upon us in a few days and as always,
we’ll be thinking of our child, no longer with us.
I’ve been thinking back to when my daughter was very young.
She was always interested in making me something she thought I would like.
Little did she realize it didn’t matter to me what she made. As they say, it is
the thought that counts. Of course I oohed and aahed at the card that had a
stick figure of me, her and her father against our house. It said, “Happy
Valentine’s Day to the best mom in the world. I love you. Love, Marcy.”
“I bet you’ll be an artist when you grow up,” I said to her.
“No, mom, I’ve decided (at 8 years old) that I want to be a veterinarian and
take care of animals,” she answered. At that time we had a beagle and was soon to
get another one. We showed the second one in contests and surprisingly he won a
few ribbons. But then he grew too big. Beagles are not supposed to exceed 15
inches and ours was 16 inches and disqualified eventually. (Maybe that was what
discouraged her from being a “dog doctor.”)
Marcy was always thoughtful about the gifts she gave me. She
sometimes thought I didn’t dress “cool” so she started buying me clothing:
denim shirts and jackets, as well as dressy blouses. She never agreed with her
father about what to get me. He was practical and always bought me pots and
pans for cooking, while Marcy would shake her head at him and make me a
necklace or a jar for flowers in a craft class. “Mom wants girly things, not
practical things,” she’d tell him, up to the time she graduated high school and
went off to college. To this day, I have kept all those denim shirts and still
wear them and think of her.
Many of the cards after she went off to college, I kept. I
wish now I had kept them all. They were most always funny cards, but sometimes
they were sentimental and talked about
what I meant to her. I didn’t have to tell her what she meant to me. She knew. We
always got along.
And that is what I remember the most: not the cards, not the
gifts, but just being together on special holidays like Valentine’s Day and
being able to talk about anything and everything. I know I will get some kind
of sign on Valentine’s Day, something simple, that will let me know she is
thinking of me as I am of her.
