Values & Valentine's Day

It’s February, which means that our attention is captured by (or perhaps bombarded with) images of idealized romantic love. We are supposed to lavish attention in the form of gifts, upon those we love, as a measure of that love.

Teddy bears, candies, cards, and Cupids abound. A few years ago on Valentine’s Day, I got an unforgettable lesson in the power of love, as expressed through genuine attention. It was the first of what would be many lessons my husband and I have learned as parents in how our loyalties, our affections, and our behaviors are “caught” (or absorbed) far more than they are taught.

My son Kian had just turned three, a few months into a preschool program. I had a passing thought as he left for school on Valentine’s day: Should he be taking treats or cards? No, I thought; surely they would have told us. Plus, these are three, four, and five-year-olds—that would be ridiculous!

When my husband Enrique came to my office to pick me up that afternoon, Kian was sitting in his booster seat rooting happily through a bag of the the Valentines he received at school that day. “This one is from Hana, this one from Zachariah…” He had memorized the names. One from every child in his class.

I was mortified, confused, angry. Thinking Kian was fully immersed in his Valentine inventory, Enrique and I began a conversation. We both grew up cross-culturally: Enrique was born and raised in Chile, and I spent the early part of my life in Iran. When we met, we could hardly believe the similarities in our biographies, though the cultures of origin were quite different. We immigrated early enough in our lives to speak unaccented English and blend into U.S. culture fairly well.

But we found that we shared odd moments of confusion at cultural norms we had either missed or misunderstood in our youth. Those moments still happen as we co-parent children who are growing up “all-American.”

In this instance, neither of us understood why, amidst so much sensitivity about holidays like Christmas, no information was circulated about Valentine’s Day. We recalled our confusion about the holiday when we had each first moved to the US, and shared our own independently formed and collectively reinforced position that Valentine’s Day is a holiday we neither understood nor cared about. But we were still embarrassed that our son was the only one who hadn’t brought Valentines to class when it was clearly expected.

For each of us, the moment surfaced unpleasant memories of our own misfit status when we arrived. And of course it also reminded us we were not as assimilated as we thought we were; certainly not enough to protect Kian from what we had experienced ourselves as children.

The next morning, Kian ran from the car back into the house and fetched his bag of Valentines. He insisted on bringing them with him to school. I thought perhaps another inventory was in order, that he wanted them just for the ride. I was mistaken. I watched him trot into class, clutching his little brown sack of notes like his life depended on it.

Less than an hour later, I received a panicked call from Kian’s teacher.

“I’m so sorry—I had no idea—we didn’t mean to offend you…” She was beside herself, words spilling out faster than thoughts were forming. I had no idea what she was talking about. Finally, she calmed down enough to explain what had happened. “Kian marched right up to me with his bag of Valentines and said, ‘I have to give these back. We don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day in my house.’”

He refused to even keep the cards, despite her protests. Knowing I was a minister, she assumed there was a religious reason we didn’t celebrate the holiday. She was mortally embarrassed, thinking she and the school had terribly offended us.

Not only had Kian picked up on far more in the conversation than we ever could have imagined, he had made a heartbreaking sacrifice. He adored those Valentines, each and every one a symbol of a new friend. The image of him marching up to his bewildered teacher and handing her the well-loved paper sack out of misunderstood loyalty to his parents was more than we could bear.

So was the thought that we had ruined that thrill and enjoyment for him with a conversation we so wrongly assumed was private. It was the ultimate expression of love—not in terms of the giving of a gift, but rather of honoring the story he believed to be important to us.

It is no wonder we are not always aware of where we first “caught” the values that we now take for granted. Parental conversations overheard and internalized, media messages both subtle and overt, even playground banter play as key a role as any direct communication of expectations and values. We carry all of our experiences into the world, informing how we make sense of it and act within it.

Though this is a maddening lesson for parents—we can’t always be vigilant to the perceptions of our children, can we?—it is a testament to the power of stories we tell even when we’re not aware we’re telling them.

As adults, with layer upon layer of embedded values, beliefs, ideas, and practices, we need to cultivate a spacious presence with each other. We must offer the kind of attention that gets deeply curious about those stories that formed us. 

Knowing those roots, we start to see more dimensions in ourselves and our neighbors. If we are lucky, we will find ourselves humbled by the lessons in love we learn together. We may just be stunned by the power we have to shape our shared story for the better.