Confessions of a parent who does not win at Valentine’s Day

“They know now. They know that we don’t know what we’re doing.”

Happy Valentine’s Day, from your friendly psycho

We “homeschooled” (cough, cough) our oldest for preschool during the pandemic years. This meant that when she rolled into Kindergarten, a confident boss, we were newbies with no idea how to navigate the realm of class parties and PTO. 

We knew from the start that we weren’t the most on-top-of-it parents—we missed Kindergarten orientation because of a poorly planned vacation—but we did our best. We remembered to pack her lunch and check her folder every day. We read the weekly newsletters and marked reminders on our family calendar.

Was her folder sometimes missing in its entirety and did we regularly forget to look at our carefully marked calendar? Well, yes. And did her younger brother (who was simultaneously in first-time pre-K) wear pajamas to school with hair sticking out in every direction and unidentifiable smudges on his face? Also yes. But the point is, we did the damn thing. By late winter we felt we had it pretty well in hand. 

Then Valentine’s Day rolled around.

Perhaps I don’t remember my own childhood Valentine’s Days very well. In my recollection, we had little packs of cards with puppies wearing sunglasses on them. Some were attached to a sucker or tiny bag of candy hearts. We passed these proudly to classmates and received 20 identical cards and candies in return. We ate tasteless candy hearts with gusto and then quickly forgot the minor holiday, dwarfed by impending Easter Baskets.

I approached our kindergartener’s Valentine’s Day through the lens of these unreliable memories and stopped by the store on February 12 to find a box of little cards and maybe some heart shaped suckers.  

I found NOTHING.

The holiday shelves were barren as the edge of the universe. 

Okayyy, I thought. We’ll cut out paper hearts for their classmates and write their names and a nice note inside. We’ll stick some stickers on them!

By the next night, the preschooler had completed four cards (as in, he had scrawled the letter “C” and the backwards initial of a classmate and stuck 14 stickers on each one). Our kindergartener had not fared much better, with much glowering and whining. So my husband and I stayed up late cutting out the remainder of hearts and, in the morning over breakfast, they scribbled their initials inside.

We sent them off proudly with a fat stack of homemade cards. Parents of the year!!

Until…

3 hours later…

The preschooler returned from school bearing a hefty paper bag covered in hearts and stuffed to the gills.  

We emptied it onto the kitchen table. It was like Christmas stocking meets Easter basket. There were puzzles. There were candy bouquets. There were small lego toys. There were homemade chocolate covered pretzels. Everything was wrapped in distinct bundles of cute cellophane with little Valentine cards attached. As, like, an afterthought. As, like, a gift tag.

I was aghast.  

“Maybe,” I thought, “All of the other parents will think that our son’s card detached from an incredible bundle of goodies and then forget about it before realizing there’s no bundle.  

“Maybe,” I thought, “They’ll be relieved not to trip over yet another toy or say no to another piece of candy. Maybe,” I thought —

But then I stopped and accepted reality.

“They know now. They know that we don’t know what we’re doing.”

It was worse when our daughter returned. The kindergarteners were seasoned. The toys and candy had matured into rainbow pens and friendship bracelets, tiaras and race cars. 

We had given these children a heart hacked out of construction paper, scrawled with a hasty initial. 

For just a moment, I let myself wallow in mortification. But then I watched my kids. They didn’t care one iota. Delighted with their haul, they paid zero attention to who gave them the eraser versus the map versus the candy sculpture. They gave exactly zero fucks as to whether their handcrafted gifts were worthy trades. 

They gave, they received, and they were happy.  

Besides, by evening, half of the toys and all of the cute cellophane were in the trash awaiting their new forever home: the landfill. We were responsible citizens of earth!  Our cards were probably ripped and composting right on people’s kitchen floors!

The days passed and we didn’t receive cold looks at school dropoff. No children, to our knowledge, asked our kids why their parents didn’t know how to “do” Valentine’s Day. The children’s cards had been received with grace. 

The weeks passed and by Saint Patrick’s Day, the Valentine’s Day debacle was behind us, a mildly embarrassing memory, and we - good parents - hid presents from “The Leprechaun” around the house all day for our kids to find.

We’ve cycled back to February twice since then. We have a second-grader, a kindergartener, and a 3-year-old preschooler this year. We’re the seasoned ones now. We bought Valentine’s Day cards two weeks ahead of time and have had the kids write a few each day. We’re stuffing packs of M&Ms inside, and who knows, maybe we’ll even add stickers. Or maybe not. We are not using cute cellophane. 

Tomorrow, the kids will give cards they thought about and worked hard on. Their peers, and ours, will accept them. Some will give them back gorgeously crafted gifts. Some will give them rumpled construction paper. And we – all of us parenting small children – will teach our kids again that the act of love is in giving and receiving with grace.