The Best Valentine Gift Of All
Tomorrow is Valentine’s day! A day set aside once a year to provide the perfect opportunity to let the person(s) in your life know they are loved and appreciated. Sometimes this comes with great cost if purchasing exquisite jewelry or other high ticket item, while other times it comes in the form of a hand made card from a child, that simply says, “I’ll love you forever and ever!”
I remember in elementary school looking forward to the Valentine exchange. We had all made the beautifully decorated and colorful shoeboxes in art class and had them placed on the window sills or other strategic places in the classroom. We’d have a party with pink and red decorated cookies and those little candy hearts that held sweet messages, along with other sweets and drink.
On the nights before the big event I’d go down the list of printed classmate names and make sure everyone in the class received the card I’d picked out just for them, signed my name and smiled! I was ready!
Our family was poor, however, and I wasn’t the least bit popular in elementary school. I believe some years we even used construction paper and ‘created’ the cards we (my sister and I) would place in the boxes of each of our classmates. At the end of the day, however, after getting home and dumping my ‘pile’ of cards onto the table to go through my bounty, I’d often become saddened by the lack of cards I’d found in my box.
So I’d cling even tighter to those I’d received and try hard not to let anyone know just how broken I was to know, “I wasn’t worth getting a valentine from every single student in my class’. I’d console myself with, ‘They probably just missed my name on the list’, even though I knew the truth.
I wondered, did anyone else feel like me? I certainly wasn’t going to ask. But are there other students in the classroom who’d only gotten 10-12 cards like me instead of the 30+ cards which included each student in the class? What did I have to do to make people like me? What made me so different?
As I reflect on my own misgivings of Valentine’s Day, I wonder now about others who seem left out on this holiday. We all need love and acceptance. I don’t know that kids necessarily can figure that out. But what of adults? Do we as a culture, make judgement calls on those who are disabled? How often do they get Valentine cards? When we see a couple who is disabled, do we look on them with disbelief that they have the capacity to love?
I think that happens, and what’s more when you see a non- disabled person who clearly adores the disabled person they are with, do you inwardly cringe or silently ask yourself why? Do you find it odd that love might happen this way? I suggest we often do and it’s so wrong. Again, we all need love and acceptance. Just because a person is unable to walk, see, hear, or is in any way otherwise disabled, that person still has the capability and desire to be accepted and loved.
So this Valentine’s Day—and everyday, if you see a couple who is disabled, or a blend of non-disabled with a disabled partner, cheer them on in your heart! They’ve beaten the odds, and no longer have to feel the pain of being left out of one of our greatest gifts known to man: the gift of love.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
#Valentine’sDay #HappyValentine’sDay #Valentine’sDayAndDisabilities #DisabilitiesAndLove #EveryoneNeedsLove #Disabilites
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