When my daughter was about 10, she came home from school, having attended something called “pre-pooh class,” a precursor to puberty class. She was somber and circumspect.
“Sweetie,” I said, “why don’t you tell me what you learned today. Start at the beginning.”
“OK. When a man and a woman fall in love, like you and mom did, and sometimes even when they’re not in love but are just interested in seeing if they’d like to be, they might touch each other, and it’s not the same as when a boy on the playground punches me in the arm. Know what I mean?”
“Yes dear. I do”
“OK, so when you and mom fell in love some of that happened and I was born. When it started, I was just a semi-colon.”
“You’re losing me sweetie.”
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Mr. Fess,” she said and passed him the card and then gave him a hug.
“A woman produces an egg every month or so and sends it down to the fallopian tube to see if there are any little visitors. Little visitors are sperm that a man might have put there because of touching. Even though the woman only produces one egg, there are thousands of little visitors trying to get to it. Miss Fricke said that a good way to think about an egg being fertilized is to think of a semi-colon. The egg is round like the top half of the semi-colon and the sperm has a little tail like the lower half, so a semi-colon reminds her of a sperm heading upstream to the egg.”
“Let’s talk more about love. What about love do you understand?”
“Well, I know you love me, and I know mom loves me, and I know I love both of you, and we all love Gram and Gramp and Alice and Maurice [cat and dog].”
“Well, we do say ‘I love you’ all the time, but how do we know when we are really loved or really love someone?”
“I know you love me because you tell me every night when I go to bed and I can just tell you mean it, and I know I love you and mom because if anything scares me and I can’t get to sleep, I think about how good it feels to love you both and whatever was bothering me stops. But some people don’t have love at all.”
“Like who sweetie?”
“Like Fess, the man who sits on the shore behind the post office, doesn’t have love. I don’t know what to do about Fess. He’s kind of scary.”
“What would you like to do?”
“I’d like to give him something like a Valentine card.”
“Want me to give it to him with you?”
In a few minutes we were headed down over the hill to town with a big hand-colored Valentine Card. I walked on the outside, she on the inside, her left hand holding my right, her right hand clutching the card. She walked up to him purposefully but didn’t let go of my hand.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Mr. Fess,” she said and passed him the card and then gave him a hug.
He hugged her back a little and said, “Thank you, Katie.” We headed back up the hill.
“I didn’t know he knew me,” she said.
“There are only 1,200 people on this island sweetie. They’ve had 4,000 days to get to know you or know about you. Believe me, everyone in your town knows you and cares about you; many love you. When you’re grown-up and know them all, you’ll feel the same.”
Phil Crossman owns the Tidewater Motel on Vinalhaven. He may be contacted at philcrossman.vh@gmail.com.
