My Unconventional Valentine

The first Valentine I ever received from Parker was a bright yellow posterboard heart, about ten inches across. No text. We were seventeen.

Other memorable Valentines from my quintessentially quirky husband:

• I came home for lunch to find a plate of pickled beet (cut in the shape of a heart) surrounded by artichoke hearts, all artfully arranged: “beet 'n' heart.”
• I got a series of 20 messages in my email inbox, back when email was still something of a novelty. They ran the gamut from sincere to sexy to self-deprecating to sappy to silly to sarcastic. Here's the final message, titled “A summary”:

So you read them, twenty messages of love, and where was all the love?
In the text?  In the moments of expectation between subject and message
body? (try different readings of that one!)  In the information it asked
you to look up at its location in the outside world?  About two and a
half inches in, on the front surface?  Somewhere in the library of
valentine's cards? In your heart?  In mine?  In the more effective
messages before #1 or after #20?  Nowhere, but it was a nice try?

• He gave me a bouquet of flours. You know: barley, rye, spelt, whole wheat.... And this was before Stranger than Fiction. Anyway, his bouquet actually looked like a bouquet, because each kind of flour was in a little dixie cup on a long metal stem.
• Then there was the clever but slightly cruel box of home-made chocolates. Have you ever bitten into a chocolate-dipped cotton ball? Initially, it has a texture rather like a Butterfinger bar...and then you realize that what you're chewing on just isn't edible.
• In 2008, when I was having little bit of a self-esteem crisis, he presented me with a round mirror on which he'd painted a spiral list of all the things he appreciated about me. It was called “The Many Faces of [Viny]-Beauty.” I'm not generally a crier, but this gift made me cry. I felt very loved, very known. This was his list:

golden bird * golden shadow * 1000-mile hiker chick * relationship therapist * burnout velvet model * pastry chef * high-heeled gardener * chili pepper professor * letter-writing bombanat * baby-journalist * wine consultant * confidante * telephone Brunhilda * bad bad black sheep * all-star evolutionary deconstructionist * poet querciate * unforgettable lover * translator * mediator * girl in the rain * the chamrealeon