ONE DAY A YEAR IS NOT ENOUGH
I don’t remember where I first read it, but I certainly agree with whoever said it: True love does not need a special day.
Please understand before we proceed any further that I do not mean to denigrate Valentine’s Day. Quite the contrary. It’s an important holiday tradition to a great many folks – and not such a bad one at that, as holiday traditions go. Any holiday that includes chocolate as one of its most important acoutrements is worth observing, in my humble opinion.
But I’ll be flat-out honest with you, fellas. One day a year is hardly sufficient. I’ve never claimed to be any kind of an expert, but it occurs to me that if you need a special day to recognize the important role that special lady plays in your life, you’re just not paying attention.
Of course, my views on the matter may be somewhat colored by the personal impact made upon me by the women in my life. My wife, my mother, a number of close female friends – each and every one have demonstrated strengths that remain a source of absolute amazement.
And by strength I do not refer simply to those biological attributes which enabled them to carry children. We learned about this in sixth grade health class. Simple observation of everyday life taught me about a greater strength still.
A strength that has enabled them to carry hardships and burdens – even while they share happiness, love and joy.
A strength that helps them to smile when what they really want to do is scream. Or sing when they want to cry.
The women in our lives have many special qualities about them. When was the last time you took notice?
Did you notice the way she volunteers for the good causes, bringing food to shut-ins or serving on the hospital auxiliary or checking on a lonely neighbor?
Or the way she may go without a new pair of shoes so her children won’t have to?
Have you kept those little love notes she occasionally sticks in your lunch box before you go to work?
Do you sit with her as she waits by the phone for that “back home safe” call from a friend or relative who drove home in the pouring rain?
Can you appreciate how badly she wants the best for those she loves? The way that she cries when her children reach certain milestones, or cheer when her friends accomplish something special, or stand up for injustice?
Do you recognize that – as smart as she is, as much as she understands that knowledge is power – they quite often make their strongest points by showing their softest side?
Sure, a woman’s loving touch can make a romantic evening unforgettable. But it can also cure a great many everyday ailments. She knows that a hug and a kiss can mend a skinned elbow one day and heal a broken heart the next.
The true beauty of a woman has nothing to do with the clothes she wears or the way she combs her hair. It has nothing to do with her figure or facial features.
These may be what we first notice, what first draws our attention. But if we’re really paying attention we notice something far greater, far more powerful.
If you wish to know the true beauty in a woman, look to her heart – the place where love resides.
See the way it is reflected in her soul, in the caring she gives, in the passion she shows, in the strength she shows when she fears there is no more strength to share.
Leo Tolstoy wrote: “Yes, women, mothers, in your hands more than in those of anyone else lies the salvation of the world.”
In looking back over my own life, it is difficult to imagine what it would have been like without the lessons I learned from some very special ladies. I believe their presence in and influence upon my life has been no accident; they have helped to mold me into who I am, and who I may yet become.
My mother taught me what love is; she loved me even when it seemed the rest of the world had given up on me. My wife - the sweetest, most gentle soul I have ever known – took the risk of making room for me in her heart, and has not evicted me despite some trying circumstances that have cropped up over the years.
Alongside such year-round valentines as this, how could all the pretty paper love notes and bouquets of roses and boxes of chocolates in the world one day a year even even begin to measure up?
(Copyright © 2013, by John A. Small)
In : Holiday
Tags: valentine's day
John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996).
Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.)
John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something.
In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems.
He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.
