Personally, I don't care how many guys this was; it St. Valentine is indeed two people, they were kindred spirits and might have been soulmates so it doesn't really matter.
What does matter to me is the story of St. Valentine as told to me by my second-grade Sunday School teacher, back thirteen years ago this week. Here's an abriged and Fantastic-ified version of the story:
You see, back in St. Valentine's time, when he was a priest known as Father Valentinus, the emperor of the day was waging war against his neighbors, because that's what all good Roman emperors do. He realized, though, that if young men were getting married and starting families and such, they would be less likely to sign up for military service so they could march hundreds and hundreds of miles away and quite probably die between the departure and the return trip.
The solution he came up with was the outlawing of new marriages.
This, in a nutshell, meant that if you were already married, then good for you, but even if you were already betrothed to someone you couldn't tie the knot. Priests and other public officials who had the authority to bind two people together in holy matrimony were expressly forbidden to perform marriage ceremonies, on pain of imprisonment.
And Fr. Valentine didn't give a rat's ass.
He kept marrying young couples in secret, going out of his way and endangering himself so these pairs of lovers could be together without compromising their honor. He supposedly performed hundreds of secret weddings in the first couple months after the anti-love-law went into effect, and this made the people very happy.
And then some asshole turned him in to the authorities, and Fr. Valentine was thrown in jail.
And he continued to perform marriage ceremonies through the window of his cell, marrying young couples together while they stood on the other side of the bars.
He was, the story goes, imprisoned for several months, during which time he performed hundreds more illegal weddings and preventing all those young men for signing up for military service.
And, again, some asshole turned him in to the authorities, and Fr. Valentine was executed.
After his execution, all the couples he had bound together threw flowers and other trinkets through the window to his cell, thus inspiring the beloved tradition of presenting your loved ones with flowers and candy on St. Valentine's Day. He is celebrated on the fourteenth of February, as this date is believed to be the anniversary of his death.
Anyway, as I was told this story nearly a decade and a half ago, this probably isn't exactly the story my teacher told the class, and may or may not actually be what happened to St. Valentine, but I love this story anyway. It always spoke to me about the importance of love and how much sacrifice love entails, not only for the people in the romantic relationship, but for those around them, as well.
This week, I'm really bitter, and on top of the whole "just got dumped" thing I began my St. Valentine's day by hiking though the snow, slush, and ice for half-an-hour because my beloved brother, whom I live with and for whom I hold in no high esteem at this particular moment, decided at forty minutes until our shifts started that I didn't deserve a ride to work today because I didn't do my "chores" last night, and I could take the bus (which is always late, takes about two and a half hours to get from my house to work on in normal conditions, and might not be running today due to all the slush and ice and snow) or I could call in and it wasn't his "fucking problem."
(I am at work, by the way. Another cousin-in-law-who-shall-henceforth-be-called-cousin-to-simplify-things-and-who-also-works-at-the-same-place-as-my-brother-and-myself very kindly drove an extra fourteen-plus miles out of his way to pick me up and get me to work on time.)
As I'm outside, trudging through the winter through the ghetto on sidewalks with a foot of snow on them (because it's too damn early and too damn cold for anyone else to have already forged the path), snow spills into my shoes, and now my feet are wet and cold and the steel in my steel-toed boots retains the temperature of the frozen water. I'm crying because I'm frustrated and it's been a hell of a week and it's cold and I've spent my entire adult life in a desert up until this point, and what I wouldn't give to be back in the relative warmth and only have to wear a single pair of pants to stave off the elements. I manage to pull myself together, though, and stop crying (which is fortunate, because frozen tears are truly beyond painful in any way I'm remotely used to and it's kind of a rough neighborhood). My cousin, this morning's hero and my knight in shining armor (I am so lucky his wife, my biological cousin, found him and kept him, because this guy is a real saint) makes to across town to where I am and rescues me from the side of the road. He asks what happened, and I promptly burst into tears again.
And I get into work, clock in only eleven minutes after my brother did with a whole two minutes to spare until the official start of my shift, and make some coffee because that's part of my job description and because having been out in the cold for a half-hour, I can already feel myself starting to get sick and only hot beverages can save me now.
As I'm getting the water for the coffee, I glance at myself in the mirror: I am wind-burned, red-eyed, kind of puffy looking, and obviously upset.
So obviously upset, in fact, that the office jerk asked what was wrong (prompting anther sobbing fit), gave me hug, and offered me his spare room and his phone number so I can call him any time I'm stuck and need a place to stay.
This, folks, is what St. Valentine's day is all about.
It's about bringing a little love to people who need some help getting it. It's about making someone smile when they want to cry. It's about giving of yourself to someone else for just a moment, just long enough to make a tiny bit of difference so the next time they look in the mirror they think, "You know what? I'm pretty okay." It's about doing these things for people you wouldn't normally spare a moment's kindness for. It's about letting people in to your heart, or your home, or your arms even when you won't get anything out of it and might be risking yourself in the process.
If this is the one day a year that you go above and beyond for someone else, that really sucks, because that whole "love thy neighbor" thing applies 24/7/365, but if a special day dedicated to putting a little love and affection is what it takes to get you to put some out there, then, hey. It's something.
Happy St. Valentine's Day, people. I'm going to listen to some Metallica and Marilyn Manson, because fuck happy music.
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