For V-Day Bah-Humbuggers Everywhere

Yesterday as I read through all the blogs about Valentine's Day, my heart was broken. Actually, I didn't need to read your posts to know there are broken hearts everywhere, more raw and bleeding on February 14th than perhaps any other day. All it takes is one sad, lonely heart to dispel, as it were, the happiness of the rest of us. Especially if that anguished heart is your daughter's. She who has been a single mom for 4 years now after 5 years of marriage. She who is lonely, longing for relationship again. She who dreaded seeing the roses and chocolates arriving for everyone else but her.

So this is her story. This is her raw and bleeding heart "salved" on V-Day by an unexpected act of unconditional love and kindness.

It started over a week ago when Amy's dad called a co-worker and arranged an 11:30a "meeting" at her company yesterday, totally unbeknownst to her. Helen, the co-worker, told Amy she needed to meet with her on Tuesday and would call her later with more details. So at 11:30a yesterday, Helen called Amy and asked her to meet her downstairs in one of the conference rooms. When Amy walked off the elevator, there was Helen, standing with this tuxedoed quartet...who then proceeded to sing two valentine/love songs to Amy.

Amy, who is very poised and put-together in her work environment, totally lost it and started crying. That started her dad crying...while everyone else in the company, looking down over the atrium's balconies or standing in the lobby, was smiling and loving every minute.

Amy's dad (my ex-husband of 21 years) happens to sing in an all-male barber-shop choir, whose director happens to be female. As an act of kindness and surprise, the choir split up into quartets and went all around Atlanta yesterday, singing to select people. Bill's quartet just happened to include their female director. And here they are, with Amy standing next to her dad, both of whom finally composed themselves.

Amy called me immediately afterwards and told me the story, shaking and crying over the phone. I was sure something tragic had just happened. No, nothing tragic. But something incredibly earth-shaking for her. Later this is what she said: "At the end of the day I realized that what I had experienced earlier was love in its purest form -- unconditional, no games, no questions, no motives. And I have to say it put everything else that's going on in my life in perspective!"

And I was thinking: little by little we need to change what happens on V-Day, or at least how people see it. We don't have to subscribe to the commercialism, even if we can't or don't want to change that aspect of it. As different ones of you have said, it's the little acts of kindness that we do for each other every day of the year that really matters. And maybe on V-Day we just get a bit more creative! And it's not just about romantic love (which, as we know, can be so fleeting and hard to sustain). It's about g'mas and their grandkids, or dads and their lonely daughters, or you fill in the blank.

Guess maybe our consciousness needs tweaking so that we can start enlightening the world around us. One Valentine's Day at a time!