True Love's Heart

For Valentine's Day, a story I wrote years ago.


He never could see why she'd married him. He hadn't had much to offer when they met. He'd been nothing, but a horse groomer, a cattle groomer he told her. He spent years roaming from town to town, ranch to ranch, grooming cattle for wealthy people to put in shows to win blue ribbons. That's what he told her at least. Truth was he was more of a drunk. Roaming from town to town was true, and true he did comb a few tangles out of the coats of the polled Herefords, but basically he roamed from drink to drink, from waking up on one stable floor to another, never noticing the day or the hour. It didn't make any difference.

Then he met her, and things changed. Her love filled up all the empty places. He became a sober man. And, as if to somehow repay her for replacing his futile, stumbling, existence with the key to her heart, he brought her gifts every Valentine day.

My first recollection of Valentine’s Day was when I was about five years old. I always sat at the front window of our green stucco bungalow peering through the lace curtains waiting for the blue sedan which deposited him at the curb every afternoon. On this particular day, the guys in the car pool were more than their usual rowdy selves. They rolled down the car windows in spite of the drizzly February day and yelled out after him as he made his way up the stairs with both arms behind his back.

"Papa, Papa," I cried, running to meet him. But for once he didn't drop his lunch bucket to pick me up. Instead he walked down the hall past the bedrooms and through the dining room, looking for my mother, the velveteen box hidden behind the back of his greasy overalls.

He found her in the kitchen, where, putting his arm around her, he shyly handed her the box. "I love you, Mommy," he said, a forty-one year old little boy.

"Oh, you shouldn't have,” were her first, and as I was to learn through the years, customary words.

I was excluded, for the first time I sensed that. While I would never feel unloved, this love, this day never stretched to include me or my brothers.

That was to be only one reminder of many over the years. Every Valentines day, I knew without fail, that regardless of what our fortunes were that year, there would be some kind of gift on Valentines Day. It might be she didn't have but one new dress throughout the whole year, and when fortunes were really bad, the only clothes she had were those she made herself out of feed sacks, but regardless of what it took, come Valentines Day, there would be his heart and the heart shaped box of candy.

I remember every different one he gave her. In the years when things were really tight, it would be a plain paper box, red with a ribbon around it. And in the years when things were going a little better, it might be a velvet heart, or a satin heart with satin roses on it. One year he gave her a lilac heart with lilac roses on it. It was always my favorite, but then, I was never much one for taste. It didn't matter what they looked like, her heart was taken in them all.

What brought to mind all these past Valentine's days was a mid-morning call from my father. "Cate," he asked, "Would you go see your mother? It's Valentines Day, you know. Could you go buy a heart to take to her at the home? You know I just can't get out. My knees are a little too weak. But it hurts me to think of her being there and not having a box of chocolates on Valentines Day. Just sign it "I love you.""

"Oh, Papa," I started to cry.

"I know,” He tried to cheer me up. "I know it's hard to see her like she is, but even if she doesn't know anything, she still might think I'd forgotten her on Valentines Day, that she isn't my sweetheart anymore. You'll go won't you?"

"I'll go, Papa,” I replied, "I'll go."

Reassured, he gave me further instructions before he hung up the phone. “You know she still loves her chocolates. Make sure it's a Russell Stover heart. That's her favorite kind."

"I will.” I promised.

"Thank you, Cate,” I could hear a tremor in his voice as he hung up the phone, "Thank you."

I put my coat on, walk out of the office and down the street, wondering if I am worthy to be the bearer of his love to my mother. I wonder for myself, what my own marriage would have been like if Charlie had brought me boxes of chocolates during the years when I was unable to see any more love in his eyes than I did, when we had grown so far apart. Can something so simple as a paper box hold something together that is no longer there? What about all these small tokens of love that my father brings my mother, are they the real thing? Charlie gave me so many more things than my father ever gave my mother, yet, in the end it was never enough.

Later in the afternoon, after I’ve once more become absorbed in my work, I look out my office door just in time to see the florist bring flowers to one of the girls that works here. For a minute, a swift second in time, a minute of home strikes me, but then I realize there isn't any one in my life who would be sending me flowers. Certainly not Charlie, that was dead a long time ago. But it is Valentines Day and it brings back memories of better times, memories of my father, and his Valentine Days. I’ve witnessed what it is to be loved and adored. Somehow that erases the emptiness of having never really been loved, for just myself, and replaces it with hope instead.