Gifts of the Heart

Last night I realized that today was Valentine's Day. That's a misleading statement, I knew that it was Valentine's Day because the boys had prepared and taken valentines for their classmates (no school today, so all parties were yesterday). And I had seen the calendar and knew what day it was. But it wasn't until last night that it hit me that it was Valentine's Day, and I hadn't done anything to prepare.

In the last eight weeks the only store I've been in was Payless to buy Phoebe some new shoes. I haven't been grocery shopping, I haven't been to Costco or Walmart, I haven't seen displays reminding me that I need to do something special for those I love. Nope, I've been in a new-baby cocoon.

And really, it wouldn't have been a big deal, except that last year I had Valentine bags waiting for the kids when thy got up. And Peter remembered. He told me he was so excited for the bags because he had goodies for everyone (leftovers from what he'd done for his class) that he wanted to add to the bags. Now I felt pressure. And some guilt. This thing that I did once had the potential to turn into a tradition. I love family traditions and I feel like we have so few of them. But I had dropped the ball.

As soon as I put Sophie down for the night, I scrambled. I scoured Pinterest looking for things we could make at home with items we already had. It was already late and every time I found something that I thought might work, I did the math and figured how much sleep I would have to give up to execute it. I kept coming up empty.

Bryan was watching it get later and me get more stressed. He encouraged me to sleep, telling me that we could figure it out in the morning. I followed his advice, but I told him I felt like I was letting people down in so many areas right now (him, the kids, family and friends who I've needed to talk to but can only find time in the middle of the night to call, the women I should be visiting teaching, I could go on) and that nothing for Valentine's Day felt like one more item to add to my list of fails. He tried to comfort me and I finally fell asleep.

I got up a few times in the night with Sophie. The second time was at 5AM. I saw that Bryan was up and I figured that he'd checked on the kids. Turns out I was right, kind of: Phoebe woke up and got herself dressed for the day at 4:30AM and Bryan had gotten up to see to her. But that's not all. I watched as he worked at the desk in our room. When I saw the brown paper sacks, I figured out what he was doing.

He was saving our tradition.

Before the sun came up this morning, Bryan put together Valentine's for the three big kids. Then, many hours later and after I had gotten a nap, he made giant heart-shaped pancakes and homemade strawberry syrup for brunch. Our successful day was made possible because Bryan made it so.

He doesn't like praise, this is one major difference between us. But he gave me a wonderful Valentine this year, the gift of time as a family and of traditions fulfilled and of delighted children, and for that I must say thank you.