A Tale of Two Valentines

Love has come and gone in my life (through a revolving door, some might say), but it’s the big-time first one I will always remember, as well as the two Valentine’s Days that infused that relationship.

Valentine’s Day, 1982

I was pregnant. I didn’t mean to be. Bruce and I were planning a May 29^th wedding and a honeymoon in the Poconos. (Heart-shaped beds were the rage!) I was living in Minneapolis with my parents and Bruce was living with his parents on their family farm 200 miles away. We commuted on weekends to see each other, and Valentine’s weekend was my turn to be on the farm.

We found out about the baby 10 days earlier and our relationship had become strained, mostly because his parents were politely pissed. Well, at least his mother was polite. His father wasn’t one to hold back how he felt about anything, especially when it came to me. He didn’t like me. Not. One. Bit.* But Bruce gave me this V-Day card, and it filled me with hope:

As I got ready to drive back to Minneapolis (which in hindsight, I should have), I noticed blood on my underwear. Panicked, I told Bruce and he told me to ask his mother about it (one of those times when a cell phone would have been really useful…). She and their Sunday company were drinking coffee in the kitchen, so I asked if I could talk to her privately in the living room. She was noticeably nervous talking about such a private matter, but I was desperate. She said she’d heard that spotting could happen during early pregnancy (my words, not hers) and advised me to call a doctor. I found one in the Yellow Pages, and when he called back, he told me to meet him in the county hospital emergency room 11 miles away.

I was 18, and only one other doctor had ever been in my VJ region before. I was scared and I didn’t have the words to ask the right questions. Bruce was clueless, too, but he stayed with me. After the exam, the doctor told me to go home and to call if I experienced any more bleeding. Home was 200 miles away, so I went back to Bruce’s parents’ house, and in the early morning hours of February 15, I painfully and quietly miscarried in the upstairs bathroom.

Bruce took me back to the hospital and I had a D&C. His mother visited later that afternoon and brought me a jar of peanuts. I can only imagine she didn’t know what to do or say, but she showed up and, god love her, I appreciated that. The next day, I went back to Bruce’s parents’ house to recover, which lasted five minutes before the fight. His father told Bruce that he no longer “had” to marry me, and my response was epic: I threw my engagement ring at him, and I launched f-bombs everywhere. I was tired, grieving, and not at all prepared for a reasoned response. Bruce took me to a friend’s house and somehow…we got married on April 3, the earlier date we’d chosen because of the baby.

Valentine’s Day, 1983

Valentine’s Day was on a Monday. We lived on the farm; his parents had retired. After lunch, Bruce said he was going to town, and I probably sent along a grocery list. I was less than a month away from birthing Carlene and I didn’t fit behind the steering wheel anymore. It was probably snowing and minus 100 degrees outside, I don’t remember. What I do remember was that after he left, I was in the living room watching All My Children when he sneaked back in the house through the mud room – the place he took off his coveralls and muddy, shitty (literally shitty, we were farmers) boots after chores – and went down to the basement. I didn’t say anything because it felt…private. His business. If he wanted me to know he was there, he’d have said something.

He tried to be quiet, but I heard him rummaging around. A minute later, he was gone again. When he returned, he handed me two roses in the bud vase from the basement and this card:

With another year of getting used to each other under our belts, the doe-eyed love we once had was replaced with the real, work-for-it kind of love. When he died five weeks later, I knew no Valentine’s Day – or any day – would ever be the same .

* When Bruce died, his father was devastated. I don’t know exactly what moved him, perhaps it was his faith and guilt, but he lived the rest of his years loving me and his granddaughter with no reservations. And I loved him, too.