The Best Valentine's Day Ever

Little Girl has always loved Valentine's Day—in the interests of complete disclosure, a holiday that sports her favored pink as a featured color would have an automatic leg up on any other—so perhaps that's why her extra bonus excitement this year didn't quite register with me.

"I can't wait for Valentine's Day!" she'd say, and on many occasions, starting shortly after she returned to school following the Christmas holidays.

Alternating amused "I know—that's your favorite!" comments with gentle "I know, but don't wish these in-between days away!" chidings, I mostly chalked Little Girl's Valentine's bubbliness up the tradition of exchanging cards and candy, and those legendary cookies that one of her classmates always brought, frosted thick and personalized with each child's name written on top in even more frosting.

In short, I missed all the signs that something big was about to happen.

When the week of the precious pink holiday finally rolled around, it was heralded by a sloppy mess of melting slush that was almost delightful, having been preceded by many weeks of harsh, heavy snow, and cold so bitter that seemed to creep inside each and every cell, determined to freeze you solid from the inside out. After braving a yard that approached quicksand in its tendency to suck deep and leech-like at whatever touched its surface, I arrived that Monday evening to pick up Little Girl from my parents' home and didn't even notice the package until Little Girl pointed it out to me.

"That's for YOU, Mommy! And I decorated it!"

With my attention thus diverted from the evidence of deceptively Spring-like weather—coated all over my shoes—by Little Girl's words and helpfully pointing finger, I duly admired the package not two feet from me on the floor. It was about the size of a large box of cereal that had been tipped over, but I did not spare much thought to what might be inside, and would not have dreamed of hazarding a guess to the packages contents, even if I had been trying to determine them.

(If you guess right, you disappoint the gift-giver by ruining the surprise, and if you guess wrong, the gift-giver presumes your disappointment when you discover what the contents actually are. Better not to guess at all, or if you do, be as ridiculous as possible, à la "Oh my goodness! However did you get a hippopotamus into such a small package?")

The box was wrapped in white tissue paper, and adorned with construction-paper hearts in red, purple, and—of course—pink, which fluttered here and there like butterflies, and also clustered into some very interesting configurations.

"I like this one!"

"That's very cool!" I agreed, nodding at the triskelion formed by three of the hearts. "Do I get to open it now?"

But that mild question was heartily DENIED from all thirds, and I was informed I would have to wait until the end of the week. Or maybe Wednesday.

When Wednesday eventually arrived—as Wednesdays are wont to do, about once a week—it was only after a package-focused Tuesday that further hyped the as-yet unrevealed contents of the box. And I still didn't get the significance of Little Girl's extreme excitement, or my parents' secretive smiles behind her. It wasn't that I wasn't interested ... only that, in retrospect, I really should have been so intrigued that it kept me awake at night—that's the level of fascination that the package was due.

(Does it count that my insomnia kept me up?)

Anyway, circumstances being what they were, I was informed that Wednesday, February 11, was the designated Opening Day after all, and then a carefully choreographed ceremony commenced. My father took photos of the package, my mother brought me a chair to sit in—the carpet in their home still being new enough to retain a certain level of sacredness, and me wearing boots coated with a layer of last year's lawn being therefore forbidden from treading upon it—and Little Girl brought her thrill level to a roiling boil, flitting about with hummingbird-speed, hopped up on the joyous nectar of giving.

I was provided with a letter opener that was not quite up to the task of preserving the heart-flocked tissue paper, but I did my best regardless. Still clueless, I nevertheless have great and enduring respect for a most excellent wrapping job, and it really was very lovely.

Once I'd divested it of its holiday finery, I flipped over the package—still incognito: I recognized the box as several-times gift-recycled and therefore incapable of providing a useful clue to the identity of the contents. I abandoned the unsharp letter opener in favor of the simple efficiency of popping open the re-taped top with my bare hands—it just seemed more prudent than daintily sawing my way inside the package with a tool that might, it seemed to me, not do all that well cutting room-temperature butter.

(Nothing against your letter opener, Mom, honest! I'm just exaggerating for comedic effect, and to prolong this part of the story a wee, tension-building moment more. Right, then. On with the show—this is it!)

My audience was quiet as I unfolded the orchid of a box to reveal the pearls within—I'd be willing to bet they were all grinning, too, though I don't exactly know—the first item, while it certainly looked familiar, didn't quite pop the thick bubble of obtuseness that enclosed me. It was a book, and as I picked it up, trying to place where I'd last seen it, the friendly face of a companion book peered up at me, and I remembered, and felt grateful tears pucker up along the spillways of my eyes ...

Just weeks earlier, after all the Christmas debris was disposed of and the obligatory holiday appearances had been made, Little Girl's daddy caught the cleaning bug, and let it fester until he was so thoroughly infected that there was no hope of avoiding the plague for Little Girl and me.

As his basement cleaning led to the attic—because to make room in the basement, he had to send more stuff to the attic, and then the attic excess had to go somewhere (or just GO)—the house grew disastrously cluttered. And as the bulk of the attic overflow was deemed "mine" (by virtue, I think, of having nothing to do with hunting, fishing, or other manly ventures), I had to venture into the cleaning maelstrom, or risk losing some treasure or other amidst the miscellaneous heaps of generic "stuff".

That such tasks were the very ruination of my lazy dreams for my holiday vacation was bad enough. I was not cushioned in pillows and snuggled in blankets, eating hot, buttery popcorn while watching America's Next Top Model reruns—oh no! Rather, I was sorting baby clothes for charity, arranging and labeling camping gear, and determining which of the superfluous Christmas decor might actually be used one day, thereby determining its rank and file position in the gradient of attic accessibility.

But when I opened the plastic tub of treasured books from my formative years—books for which no bookshelves had existed when we moved into our current home—I did not find the expected smooth covers and pages, their once-crisp edges gently polished from repetitive, glorious reading. Instead, I saw chewed and gnawed and mouse-nested schnibbles. I smelled a history of mouse lives, heavily perfumed with nausea-inducing ammonia.

And I heard myself not crying, because crying wouldn't have covered the immutable break in the chain that linked me to childhood dreams, escapes, and reminiscences. My books were my talismans—things which, by mere sight and simple touch, reconnected me to my past—and they possessed the near-miraculous ability to reignite memories so old that I'd forgotten they'd ever so much as sparked. Finding my books—never "just" books to me—vandalised and abused, neglected and destroyed ... well, mere "crying" wasn't enough in the shock of discovery.

So I did not cry—I sobbed. I mourned and I grieved, as is necessary after any loss. But the stench of past vermin infestation added an urgency to the need for putting this horrible episode behind me. And as I bagged my books and tried to convince myself that they were, personal attachment aside, only "things", after all, I did not notice that Little Girl had hatched a plan, then and there.

I sat with the box of books on my lap and listened in dazed wonder as Little Girl explained—and my parents filled in the jubilant gaps she left behind her as she leapfrogged along in the tale—how she had made a list of the books she could see I was most saddened to lose. And how she'd given that list and a wad of her saved money to my parents the next time she saw them, asking them to help her find these books—some of which were years out of print.

While I'd been too overwhelmed by my curdled mouse-shitty attic surprise, Little Girl had started an act of empathetic kindness—and seen it through germination to fruition, with a little help from my parents (and used book sellers on Amazon.com). Just as my old-favorite books were more to me than printed pages and stamped covers, her gift was more than mere restoration of my treasures—it was a picture worth countless words, it was love in tangible form, and it was the definition of how she is, already, the person I once only dreamed she would become.

I put the books Little Girl gave me into a newly-cleared space on the lone shelf in my bedroom. And to remind myself that a story is always more precious than the paper it is written on—or any object-links to it—I'm putting this story on my blog.

With her actions, my sweet Little Girl has written it just right.