Flour on the Floor: Shortbread Cookies are Not for Kids

Despite it’s current romantic incarnation, Valentines Day began as a religious holiday. It was cause for a big feast celebrating the life of Saint Valentine. Like most major holidays--at least in America--it has slowly been eroded by consumerism. Now it’s mostly a boon to the to the chocolatier, the restaurateur and Charles R. Walgreen. Yet the high school me used to delight in the day.

Oviedo High’s enterprising student council concocted the brilliant plan of selling single roses on Valentines Day. Better yet, they delivered them during class and one-by-one. So each time Mrs. Michaud would lift her hand to write on the board, there’d be a knock, then a twitter of excitement when a council member walked in bearing a rose. Who was it for? Who was it from? Then just as we’d quiet down, there’d be another knock. Between classes, there was the attending cacophony of female chatter about their own roses and about all of the others that had been delivered. Now, that kind of thing would be instantly transmitted via facebook, twitter, instagram, google+ circles, and others that I am too old to know about.

But back then, when we were still passing notes in class and eagerly awaiting yearbook inscriptions to see how boys felt about us, the public nature of the rose delivery was a thrill. With no status to update online, this was as close as we got to announcing new, young love. By my senior year, tribes of girls had also started sending roses to each other so that by the end of the day, everyone had nearly full bouquets sticking out of their backpacks--a declaration of popularity among friends as well as desirability to the opposite sex. The roses could represent anything from friendship to a tentative romantic first step to the marking of territory. That last year of high school I received roses from: Dana, Katie, Gray, Tisha, Katrina, Kristin, Dave, Russ, Chris, and one anonymous sender (if you read my last blog post about my propensity for recording things, you’ll know this is true). It was exciting.

Post high school, on Valentines Day, I’d get a card or chocolate or flowers from whomever was my current flame. We’d go to dinner or a movie or both. It was nice but predictable. When I met my husband, he announced (six months in) that he didn’t “believe” in the holiday. What he said: if I’m doing my job as a boyfriend/husband for the rest of the year, and being romantic, considerate, and spontaneous, then I don't need to conform like all the other schmucks out there and I would rather buy you something you love when you don't expect it than red roses when you do. What I heard: I am cheap.

I have to hand it to him, though, he has put his (romantic) money where his mouth is: presenting me with jewelry for no reason; hiring a courier to stand in the never ending line at Garrett’s popcorn then deliver it to me when I was pregnant and craving and he was out of the country; and spontaneously putting our wedding song on and dancing with me in our kitchen. He’s right, he doesn’t need Valentines Day.

But I’ll admit that, over the years, there was still some part of me that mourned a little when the day slipped by unnoticed--or rather, willfully ignored. I’m far too pragmatic to be happy about a presentation of flowers that cost double their value and I’m uninterested in jockeying others for a restaurant table on the busiest day of the year. So what kind of Valentines Day would meet my  fickle needs? Enter my son.

When my son was five, he asked what his daddy and I were going to do for Valentines Day as he carefully printed his name on valentines for his classmates. As I tried to explain that we didn’t really celebrate that way, he looked up at me with his big, innocent blue eyes until I finally just said, “I need a Valentine, wanna be mine?” He said “yes” and immediately began talking about how we could spend the day. Now, four years in, he begins plotting it months in advance.

As is always the way with children--well, with my children--a sweet, small idea quickly becomes overblown. If I say to my son on a random Saturday that I’d like to spend a little time with him and that we should walk to Starbucks for a doughnut, he immediately begins wondering aloud what time Six Flags opens.

Each year, we spend forever going back and forth on our Valentines Day plans. His typical proposal involves starting the day with breakfast out then some sort of activity like ice skating at Millennium Park then lunch out then maybe a movie or a museum or a quick plane trip somewhere before rounding the day out with dinner someplace special like Rainforest Cafe.

Inevitably, I find myself in the position of reeling him in. By the time we start our outing, he’s disappointed in its small scale (and its lack of talking animals) and I’m exhausted from our negotiation; it can leave me feeling like a failure before we even start. I remind myself that the day is all about the tradition we’ve started and the time we get to spend together. When I mention this to my son, he helpfully suggests that he could stay home from school on Valentines Day so that we’d have even more quality time. Thus putting me in the position yet again to have to say “no.” Sigh.

Despite the frustrations that go into its planning, we always end up doing things we wouldn’t have without the set-aside time the holiday affords. We’ve attended the New Year’s parade in Chinatown (and inadvertently marched in it), battled each other in laser tag, and spent an afternoon in an arcade. This year, we went to the Legoland Discovery Center and raced our homemade lego cars against each other and attended a workshop on building a T-rex.

Through it all, we talked (and trash-talked, when it came to the lego car race). I learned about his crushes, the plot of a story he’s planning on writing, and why he sleeps so close to the edge of the bed. The number of times he said “Thank you” and “I love you” that afternoon are far too many to count.

I realize that our tradition is fleeting. That his ever-changing list of crushes will, in a few years, result in a real, live girlfriend. He’ll be too cool for legos and laser tag and long dinners with his mom. I spend much of my time as a parent reminding myself--with relief and despair--that he won’t be this age forever. And then my Valentines Day will change again as it has from young love to married love to parental love. I wonder what will be next?

As is also the way with my children, they seem to have some delicate scale they weigh time on. As in who gets more with me. The whole Valentines Day venture--and the seemingly millions of conversations about it with my son--doesn't sit well with my daughter. She suggested that she could be my valentine next year to which my son replied, eyebrows raised to indicate her naivete, “Um, you are not a boy.” My daughter told him, “So what, girls can marry girls!”

As a consolation prize, I baked heart-shaped shortbread cookies with my daughter on the actual holiday. The cookies are a Barefoot Contessa recipe and, in general, I think you can’t go wrong with her. The mistake I made was assuming that kids might like shortbread cookies. They are neither gooey nor sweet enough to satisfy the under-20 set. To quote my son: “Eh, they’re not your best.” I found them yummy with tea, but even I can’t eat 30 shortbread cookies.

I find it important to mention that, now that we have a daughter, my husband has reformed his view of the holiday. He took her out to the dinner his belief system wouldn’t allow him to take me to. He made our daughter smile this year with a single red rose. He made me smile this year when he told me that he got the rose free at the dentist that morning. Some things never change.