The Sheila Variations

The spitball Valentine

[This is a repost. I post it every year. ]

I am the type of girl who gives a photograph of her eyeball to her date on Valentine's Day. I'm just sayin'. Anyone who would do that and think it was appropriate, is not really a gushy romantic type.

But the other night I was looking through an old box of letters - stuff I have kept for, my God, over 20 years. At the bottom of this box was a tiny grungy crumpled up piece of construction paper. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. It could have been a spitball that I had saved for unknown reasons ... I didn't know what it was, so I opened it up.

And when I saw the message - written to me by an 11-year-old boy - years and years and years ago - when I was 11 too - Jimmy Carter was president when this note was written ... I felt a rush of "time" - like having a perception, in reality, of the true CURVED nature of space. Looking at his penciled words to me, I suddenly felt not like this was a "memory" or anything that took place primarily in my brain - but I felt literally propelled back in time. I was not here. I was back there.

I cannot believe I kept this tiny spitball, but I did. It was a "Valentine". Written to me in the 6th grade.

Of course, in grade school, you go out and you buy Valentine's Day cards in bulk (2 good 2 be 4 forgotten...) - and maybe you sign a personal note to your friends, but all the cards were store-bought.

I was absolutely PASSIONATELY in love with a boy named Andrew Wright. I say both his names proudly. I have no idea where he is now. [UPDATE: Because of this post, actually, he "found" me and we are back in communication. I saw him at my high school reunion in 2005. So awesome. All because of that age-old spitball and all because I put his name out on the Wild Wild Web!!] If he ever runs across himself, on this post, then now I can come clean:

I was 11 years old and I used to lie awake at night, in bed, ACHING with love for Andrew Wright. My love began to blossom for him in the 5th grade, even though I had known him since we were 5 years old. It was like I suddenly saw him anew. In 5th grade, as my love for him grew, there were times when he would get up to go put on his coat or whatever, and my friend Betsy and I would run over and kiss the seat of his chair.

But that was from when I was in 5th grade, and still only a CHILD.

The love that exploded upon my head in 6th grade was REAL love - it was torturous, deep, and ultimately perfect. It hurt. I didn't just love him because he was a cute kid, who had a nice way about him, and was really funny, and thought I was a good person to have on his baseball team. I loved him because he was the epitome of all that was GOOD and RIGHT in the world. I looked at him, 11 year old Andrew Wright, and saw the essence of goodness.

We grew up in the same neighborhood, and had been hanging around since we were little kids. We were on the same schoolbus, we would all play tag in the summer twilights, we would sneak into that one lady's backyard and pick raspberries, running away when she would peek out her window. In 6th grade, he and I would go skating on the little hidden pond in the middle of the woods, and he would steal my hat, and I would chase him, and from such simple moments, true love was born.

Of course, it was all very unrequited. We were 11. Half of the fun was just being in love with someone. Nothing ever had to be DONE about it.

So anyway - there was this big Valentine's Day ceremony in our class. Kids called up - cards passed out - everyone hovering over their mounds of cards - reading the messages - a-flutter with excitement and 6th grade romantic feelings and teeny hormone surges. I had a pile of cards in front of me, and of course - immediately - I started searching for Andrew's. Trying to play it cool, of course. I had on my "game face". Just flipping through all the cards, whatever, no big deal, but my eyes were peeled for his handwriting. For the card I knew would come from him. This was winter, remember - and he and I were spending all of our time after school, and on weekends, skating on the frozen pond in the woods near our houses. It was this private thing we did - and we wouldn't even acknowledge it when we were in school. We weren't all buddy-buddy, I wouldn't reference our skating moments, it was our secret. We never said, "Let's keep this a secret" - I guess when you're a kid you really understand these things. We had become very close, in an unspoken way, in an outdoor way. Our true milieu was on the ice, wintry woods around us, chasing each other, pretending to fight, having races, laughing, bantering, bare grey trees towering above.

I looked for his card, my heart pounding in my throat. By the time I got to the bottom of the pile, that heart had turned to lead. Dropped like a stone. And I felt cold, in my veins. He hadn't given me a card. There was no card from Andrew Wright in my pile. How could that be? How could he ... how could he ... how could he have not written me a card? After all that we had shared? After the frozen pond?

I thought I might have to get up and leave the classroom, which was abuzz with conversation and laughter and gossip, everybody comparing notes, wandeirng from desk to desk. I had a pile of cards in front of me, but not one from the boy I loved. A huge-ness rose up in me - a wave towering - my eyes smarting ... You know that feeling? Something big coming? A burst of tears approaching, and it was going to be huge. I needed to get away and just be REALLY REALLY sad for a minute, away from my classmates. Grief. That was what I was feeling. In its purest state. And nobody must see that grief. Andrew must never ever know how much I had hoped for a Valentine from him.

And then - suddenly - Andrew Wright, on his way somewhere else, walked by my desk and, without stopping, or saying a word, dropped what looked like a tiny spitball in front of me. He kept going, didn't look back. Nobody would have perceived the moment, if they had been looking on. It was a sly move, meant to appear invisible, a camouflage. Disbelieving - I opened up the spitball. It was not a store-bought card. It was not a rubber-stamp Hallmark that he had just signed his name to. It was not generic.

It was a tiny piece of white construction paper, which he had clearly ripped off the corner of a larger sheet, and he had written his own message on it - in #2 pencil:

Sheila - You're a good kid. And a good storywriter. Andrew.

Isn't it so silly that I copied that message down just now, and felt tears come to my eyes? After so many years?

That Valentine's Day message from him meant more to me than any store-bought card or little teddy bear or piece of candy ever would. My heart cracked in a million pieces. I cherished it. Obviously, I cherished it enough that I still have it.

And - even though I was 11 - and just a little kid - I knew, with my dawning women's intuition what it all meant:

-- He couldn't have just given me a little Hallmark Valentine. It wouldn't have been right. In his 11 year old heart, he knew we were closer than that.

-- He needed to express how he felt about me ... and yet in a private way. He sensed that it would not be appropriate to have his Valentine handed out to me in the public class ceremony.

-- A generic note would not have been right, he knew that, so he made the bold move to go personal. He addressed me. Personally.

It is, to date, the most romantic Valentine's Day gift I have ever received. 11 year old boy.

And one last thing: the "and a good storywriter" kills me to this day.

Posted by sheila