It's funny because it's true.
Last year, in anticipation of Valentine’s Day, we Harpies had ourselves a seminar on the pressures (and occasional pleasures) of the holiday. If you want to revisit that, you can read it here, but this year, we’re taking a slightly different perspective, and using it as a jumping off point for talking about something thematically related, but a bit more encompassing.
Since there’s no question that love (meaning affection, kindness, fellow-feeling, whatever) makes this world a better place, we’d like this week’s FFT to be a place where everyone–regardless of your gender, sexual preference, or your romantic status–can reflect a little and share a story about words and deeds that made someone feel very loved and valued.
It doesn’t have to be a something that happened on Valentine’s Day, or even a strictly “romantic” gesture (and dear heavenly harpy, please, no ring-in-the-dessert cliches), but any gesture of love–from a family member, from a friend, from a total stranger–that you’ve been the recipient of, or that you have graced someone else with.
I am fortunate enough that I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head, but one I’ll share was something my mom did for me that I still can’t quite believe.
I was a scholarship kid, which was good, since I had to put myself through college, and money was always tight. When we went out for dinner after my graduation, I thought that was pretty special (especially since it was the the first time either of my parents met the Dude). But after I schlepped my stuff back to my mom’s house for the summer, I found a big wrapped box on the dining room table. Inside were ten one hundred dollar bills, which is more money than I’d ever had in my hands. It wasn’t for school in the fall, or for anything practical or Mom-approved. It was for me to enjoy. Imagine that: money only for enjoyment.
I used it to go to Chicago, to go to New Orleans with the Dude, to go sky-diving with friends. I used it to basically have a little bit of a bacchanal before heading off to grad school. Money isn’t love–I’d already learned that lesson–but after a lot of financial hardship, that gift was an unmitigated blessing. It’s hard to think about what she must have gone without to gather that all together, and I still get a little sloppy, remembering it.
Oh Dork that’s so sweet. Mine is mama/college related too. I overheard my mother tell someone else that she cried when she dropped me off for college. My mother .never. cries. The only time I ever saw her cry was when my g’ma died.
I think one of the most loving things I have ever experienced was a card from my mom on my 13th birthday. At my religious school, all my (girl, of course) friends were getting chastity rings from their parents for their 13th birthdays, and I was happy to receive a beautiful sapphire ring from my mom on mine. But the card was a long letter about how valuable I was to God and to my family, no matter what choices I made with regard to my body. My mom said she hoped I would always make healthy choices for myself, but that no matter what I would always be special and always be loved. Over the years, my appreciation for that gesture has grown exponentially, as I’ve realized what it meant for my mom to buck the norms of our community to express the love, trust, and respect she has for me. (It’s making me all teary eyed right now, in fact.)
Very recently, I got dumped… Now, stay with me on this one… I know it doesn’t sound happy and along the lines of the request… This relationship ended and it surprised and hurt me in ways I’d be hard pressed to explain. On the up side of this, my friends have been more than amazing. One of my oldest friends went into stealth mode one morning and left a little bouquet of flowers on my car with a little note saying that he cares. It’s a little sappy, but made me smile.
@JennyK that is beautiful – you harpies are making me cry
On the morbid side, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, the first thing my husband said to me was, “I’m with you all the way, and I’ll love you whatever you look like”. It was a loving and sensitive thing to say then, and I appreciated it more and more as I heard awful stories about women whose male partners dumped them once they didn’t look satisfactory or were too sick to pick up the man’s dirty socks. Mr MM can be difficult, but he *always* has my back.
The other thing(s) have been donations people have made to favorite non-profits in my honor. It’s happened a few times and it’s a gesture of surpassing kindness that makes me warm inside whenever I think about it!
PS I will be celebrating this V-Day by leaving Mr MM to the glories of the NBA All-Star game while I lead a program for our Jewish feminist group about Jews and Valentine’s Day. Chocolate will be featured. And a happy V-Day to all of you!
Obviously there are many MamaSharper stories, I could tell here, but really, my BigStepdaddy comes immediately to mind. Whenever I travel, which is a lot, he always calls or e-mails to say, “Can I arrange a car to take you to the airport?”
Anyone who’s ever flown into NYC knows what a huge and expensive hassle it is to get to and from the airports here. At first I was always like “No, Dad, that’s okay, I can do it”–because I’m an independent woman! I can take the M60 bus! I can ride the A train for an hour and then get on a shitty JFK shuttle! I can pay for my own cab!
But then I realized that really what he was doing was finding a way to make my life easier and happier, and that was his way of showing me how much he loves me. So I get a car service to take me to the airport. And I always call him and say, “Thanks, Dad.”
Also, JennyK, your mom is THA BEST in my book!
I knew I was going to marry my husband after we had a car wreck. We had been on our way to my grandma’s for Thanksgiving when I hydroplaned and landed us in a ditch. In the moments after the wreck, in which I was hurt, he kept me calm, called for help, and held my hand. Though he hung back and let my ER doctor dad take the lead while I was in the ER, later, when we were figuring out if I would go back to school, or home with my parents, or what, he announced that he wanted me to come home with him, that he would take care of me. And I knew my parents knew things were serious between us, because they went along with it. He took me to his house, gave me my meds, let me sleep in his recliner (I had a back injury), and kept me well stocked on movies to watch and ice cream to eat. Caring for me when I was hurt was one of the sweetest things anyone has ever done for me, and I’m so happy we get to take care of each other every single day.
I come from a family that, while affectionate in person, can be a little tight-lipped when it comes to praise or affirmation (criticism, on the other hand, flows pretty freely). So even though my dad and I are really close, we don’t always express it out loud.
One of the hidden gestures of love he makes for me is to send just about each and every blog post I write around to some of his friends and co-workers. He even used to share clips of my old movie and theater reviews on his favorite message boards, something I found out while trying to compile a list of track-back links. I don’t find out about this stuff until I meet a friend of his who says “Oh, I’m a fan of your blog – your dad is so proud of you.”
My wife, unbeknownst to me, got me a ticket to a live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion, when they did their show in Bethlehem, PA, on Christmas Eve. It was a singularly beautiful thing, and I will treasure the beauty of that show, and the beauty of my wife, forever.
My brother and sister are my best friends, my sister has one and 8/9ths children, and I live very far away all of these people. My sister hired our brother to stay home with her son for the first year of his life, and I felt a little left out by how much this little guy LOVES my sister, my brother, and my mom. I tried not to be too down about it, because, what are you going to do? I live in NY, they’re all in TX, and he’s only like 22 months old.
Then I got home to visit for Xmas and when I showed up at my sister’s house she said to him, “Who’s that?” and he looked at me really hard, then his face lit up and he yelled “Aunty XXX New York!!!” and launched himself across the room at me. It turns out my undercover hurt feelings were not undercover at all and my whole family had been showing the baby pictures of me and telling him how much I loved him and missed him. It was … nuts how much that mattered to me and how happy it made me. Now he loves me too! And more to the point, they all loved me enough to make it happen. Awww, now I’m sloppy.
When I started dating, my dad wasn’t very thrilled. He made it clear that none of those boys deserved me. Before every date, he gave me a $20 and a quarter. This was before cell phones were ubiquitous and payphones only cost 25 cents. It seems like a small thing, but he’d say that even though he didn’t trust those boys, he trusted me and no matter what happened I could call him if I needed him.
MM is great at these things. She totally put notes in my lunchbox, etc. My dad has a habit of telling me that I give the best hugs whenever I see him for the first time on break or when I’m leaving to go back to school. One of my cats will always come up to me and lick away my tears when I’m crying, which is probably due to the salt, but makes me feel very taken care of nonetheless.
My boyfriend sometimes makes me comic strips about our relationship, or cute cards or drawings. I have a corkboard set up next to my bed that we call the Wall of Cute. It makes me happy just to look at it.
Also, my boyfriend and I are both single parents, so we don’t have much money. This year for Valentine’s Day, he’s going to clean the bearrings in my speed skates. Nothing says love to a roller derby girl like freshly cleaned bearrings!
This is the same boyfriend who hijacked my best friend for an entire day, dragging her to the mall to shop for me before Christmas. He fills my life with stories I could share here… I’m so lucky!
My family had a really, really bad year. Among the many things that happened in 2009, my dad had several bouts of heart problems. I spent a lot of time in and out of ERs. Every time, when I called my boyfriend to tell him where I was, he dropped whatever he was doing and came to be there with me, hold me, fetch diet coke for me, let me cry, whatever.
He also went with me to clean out my parents’ garage when their house was foreclosed (told you it was a bad year).
Yes, he has done thing like send me flowers or take me out for a nice birthday dinner. But it’s the being there in crap times that counts.
AmandaS – your story reminds me:
When I was old enough to start going out with friends on my own (meaning some of my friends were getting old enough to drive, so we could be out without a parent chauffeuring), my parents told me very seriously that if I ever went somewhere with friends, and things started happening that I wasn’t comfortable with – drugs, drinking, skeezy guys, anything – no matter what state I was in, if I called them to come get me they promised not to punish me, and to show up anywhere at any hour.
I have loads of stories about the Geek Husband What Rules, including his tendency to make my favorite stuffed hedgehog, Horatio, (whom he bought for me), talk to me in a silly British accent whenever I’m sad.
When he went to a florist and asked for a bouquet of the greenery that goes around flowers for me, because he thinks that something that’s going to wilt and die in a few days is a stupid symbol of love. The greenery does usually last much longer.
Oh man, so many things. I was just out of the country for five months on internship. My mother’s best friend (I call her my back-up-mum) sent me a postcard every week, and most of my relatives did as well. My mother sent me cheese and postcards and Dutch treats and at least one e-mail a day. But most surprising was the CD with Dutch songs that showed up at my work adress from my much-older niece around Christmas, with a note that I could put it on when I was homesick.
Also, the dog is always happy to see me when I go home. And it’s (probably) not just the fact that he gets a cookie.
These are making me tear up.
When my uncle died (brain tumor) last fall my mom and I visited him in hospice after they informed us it could be any time. I hated seeing him there so it was hard for me to go but I went to say good-bye. We just sat and chatted, he was pretty non responsive at that point and I don’t think he opened his eyes once. A friend of his came and we walked down the hall to give them privacy. We returned and the friend left and we chatted for a little more. Then it was time to say good bye. I leaned over his totally immobile form and gave him a kiss. In my brightest voice possible I said, “ok X! I’ll see you later, I love you” and without opening his eyes he mouthed back to me, “I love you.”
clarification: My mom and I were chatting with each other for my uncles benefit not with him.
*wipes away tears*
These are just lovely. Thanks, Harpies, for this thread.
I was married about a year, and needed to have a left eye enucleation surgery (long time coming, but an unexpected injury clinched the timing). The first thing I saw after I woke up from surgery was my husband, looking so worried, holding a beautiful plant saying “I got this for you”.
He was first to look when the bandages came off, and insisted it was NOT gross at all. Then he came and held my hand while I had my first appt’s for my artificial eye being made.
On a slightly less medical note, my oldest brother (10 yrs older) took time off work to come to my college graduation, took my mom and I out to a fancy dinner, and gave me a book on financial management to help me transition to “the real world”. I credit his thoughtfulness with getting my husband and I off to a good financial start when we started our first jobs.
The one that’s on my mind right now is a little one but it meant a lot to me – yesterday I lost my wedding ring in Vancouver Airport, it must have fallen off sometime during the whole remove your shoes, belt, computer etc thing and although the staff were very helpful no one could find it.
I was very upset about it it cost my husband money we didn’t really have (it’s a vintage ring and unusual) so I rang him in tears and his response was ‘don’t be upset about it, it’s only a possession, it doesn’t say anything about my love for you which is what counts.’
So yes, that’s pretty sappy I know but given how upset I was it’s the thing that came to mind for this post.
For my birthday last year, my sweetheart arranged for us to attend the book signing for some activists I particularly admire. Then, somehow, magically, he surprised me with an invitation to their house for dinner! We spent my 30th listening to people talking about what it was like, living the Civil Rights movement in the South in the 60s, and it was the most amazing & thoughtful gift anyone has ever given me.
This sounds sappy, just typing it out, and totally cliche, but:
Love poems. I met my husband through poems we wrote, obviously not about each other, and a little less than 5 years ago he flew a thousand miles to meet me. He asked me to be with him, and I declined, and he planned a series of poems with a definite number with a definite ending. If I still didn’t want him after that last poem (i’m so bad, i can’t remember if it was 4 or 6), he promised to stop pursuing me. Every one of those poems was the best poem he’d ever written, and they were just so perfect and wonderful and I’m crying a little thinking about it. And they stopped when he promised they would, and I know they would have stopped sooner if I’d made it clear I didn’t want to read them. I totally did want to read them.
These are such beautiful stories! I am totally crying reading them.
I was born to when my mom was 18, and she doesn’t know my biological [father]. When I was about 1, she met the man who she would eventually marry, my dad. The most loving gesture anyone has ever given me? That my father loves me so damn much, and has given my so much and always been so supportive and loving. He could have peaced out when he found out there was a baby involved, or treated me poorly, but never, once, has he shown me anything but unconditional love, and damn if that isn’t the greatest thing.
@rainy_day: Aw, I love that. That’s just how I feel about my stepdad.
Wow I love this post, it’s so sweet and happy.
One story springing to mind is an instance of one of the best friends a teenage girl could have. Sophomore year of high school, my friends and I got into a huge fight over a boy. (This is simplifying, but still, basically what it boiled down to). Everything came to a head between myself and another girl. We had a huge face off, incredibly nasty things were said to me, and then everyone ran to the mean girl.
The next day, everyone gave my the cold shoulder and brought mean girl flowers, balloons, etc. My best friend at the time looked at that, looked at me, and came over. She hugged me, and said “I have something much better for you”.
The next day she came in with hand made paper flowers because they would never die, paper mache balloons because they would never deflate, and one of the nicest letters I have ever received from someone. Sometimes 15 year olds can be great…and 15 years later, we are still close!
A few months ago my sister came to visit, and we had these tickets to a strange German festival, so my partner and I met her for some sausage. She told us about seeing the guys who wrote Freakenomics on like 20/20 or something the night before, talking about the benefits of prostitution and being generally shitty misogynists. My partner started talking about rape culture, and how the whole set of assumptions about sex work in this culture are totally fucked, and how rape as defined by the law isn’t really sufficient to encompass the problems of heterosexual relations in terms of women being pressured into sex and sexiness and sexified-ness, and how women’s work is under-appreciated, and how work that women do (like nursing) is under-appreciated until men start participating in it more, and how now that more men are becoming nurses and more women are becoming doctors, the relative social worth of each career is changing to reflect the way women’s work and work that women can do is worth less than men’s work, and on and on. My sister isn’t quite so verbal as he and I, and I frequently end up articulating what she’s trying to get at for her when she’s trying to write or say something complicated, so she was just like, “Yeah… yeah… yeah!” and so on.
Then when we got in the car to go home, I was like, I’m so proud of you for saying all that and expressing it so well to my sister, I think she really appreciated it. And he said that although he was always aware of rape culture and the general misogyny of society, it wasn’t until he met me that he began to consciously think about it and look for it. And how now that he’s hep to it, he can’t stop seeing it, and he realizes that it’s everywhere. I felt like crying I was so happy. Which, I know is weird, but it felt so amazing to know that all this shit that I talk about all the time, sometimes I feel like I screaming into a vacuum or something, and like I’m not making a dent, and I feel so overwhelmed and unable to do anything. And he straight up told me that my feminist rants actually did have an effect on him (I had always assumed that he was as aware as I was, because our discussions were always so lively and he just always seemed so already aware), and to know that he listened to me carefully enough for my words to affect his view of the world. Nobody in my family ever listens to me, and my whole life has been a series of my family telling me to shut up and calm down and chill out and just why can’t you be quiet and have some fun already etc. So this new family I have, it’s like my thoughts actually matter, instead of my presence being some sort of unit of social capital that gets trotted out whenever I do something worthwhile according to their value system. It was one of those moments that I fully realized what it means to have a chosen family, and what family is supposed to be like.
My dad died suddenly about two weeks before finals my first year of law school. He and I had a really toxic relationship and hadn’t spoken in about two years. Nevertheless, his passing dredged up all kinds of emotional turmoil, and I was a mess. As per usual, my closest girlfriends were my rocks, and they all made it clear that if I needed them at the funeral, they would be there (even though it meant flying more than halfway across the country). My friends at law school – who I’d known for less than a year at that point – were unbelievable. I got flowers, and cards that conveyed genuine, heartfelt sentiments of sympathy and support. They rallied to help me through finals, and even some of the most competitive, borderline douchey guys in our class were offering outlines, notes, and other help when they heard about my circumstances. In the end, I made it through what could have been a complete emotional and academic flame-out thanks to the unwavering support of old and new friends, and the kindness of people who were practically strangers.
Such sweet stories!
Mine starts off rocky: I unfortunately managed to dig myself into about 2,000 in debt over one of the stupidest mistakes ever. I went to see my BF in Germany and when I landed I had the nasty surprise that he was seeing someone else. I came back home broken hearted, in debt and with a payment due that I couldn’t afford. I fell behind several months worth and was effectively ruining my credit but I was so ashamed of my poor choices I didn’t tell anyone and I had never been in debt so I didn’t know what to do.
After the third payment had past and I had an outstanding balance the credit card company called my old home which is still my parents current residence. Dad was very calm, and posted two payments and took me
off the red list on the collectors credit card.
He called me and told me what happened. He didn’t even flip out or ask me how I managed to do what I did. I broke down in my gratitude and told him what had happened and was very surprised when I recieved sympathy and budgeting advice. He told me mom was furious about it and refused to speak to me which was why he was the one talking and not her. I got off the phone feeling better that I could handle
the amount I owed but sad that I had managed to disappoint my family again.
A week later I recieved a box in the mail with a very nice and very expensive sweater, some candy, and a small hand written note from my mother letting me know that no matter what or how old or stupid I get I am always their child and even when they can’t fathom how I manage to get myself into trouble they are very pleased with the honor that they have at helping me and always being there. I turned into a nice little mush ball and had to compose myself before I could call to thank her.
Yeah, this thread is amazing. This is where Melissa McEwan would write “blub!”
I thought of another one I wanted to share (MOAR LUV!): it was an email from one of our readers about a particular post. I don’t want to risk breaking confidences with too many details, but this reader sent us an email saying that she had shared a post with a family member who was in a pretty awful situation at her college.
With support from our reader, the family member stepped forward to tell a difficult truth that resulted in others coming forward with similarly awful situations, and a horrible person got at least some of what he deserved.
Now, I didn’t *make* anyone do anything, and our reader didn’t need to say anything, but the fact that she let me know that maybe I sorta kinda helped prompt some brave, personal/systemic activism that actually resulted in a bit of justice? I’m going to carry that with me forever.
Yep, crying again.
This thread/post is cheering me up immeasurably. For me, this may sound odd, but the sweetest gestures actually come from my pups, both alive and dearly departed, who always sense(d) when I was down. Nothing quite like having a springer spaniel awkwardly climbing into your lap, or a teensy shih-poo deciding it’s fun to curl up on the pillow next to you at night. That’s unconditional love.
@NefariousNewt: Newtie, I love it. How sweet and understated!
A little late to this one but thank you all, this was such a nice ending to the week.
Mine is very simple. My partner has been the majority of my emotional support through graduate school, constantly reminding me that my success in school does not make me who I am. Over the summer, I had to take an exam that would determine if I could graduate. Moments before I was to walk in to my advisor’s office to find out the results I got a message from my partner that said “good or bad, the results do not define you.”
That sort of thing means more to me than any holiday prescribed gesture.
My younger brother is on the asperger’s end of the autism spectrum, so expressing emotions can be more than a little difficult for him – not to mention handling the emotions of others. But he has always found sweet, tender ways of showing me he cares – drawing silly comics for me, sending care packages when I was living out of state for grad school, making faces at me that he knows will crack me up.
When we were very young, though, we had a lot of trouble connecting. I am hyper-emotional, very sensitive, a crier and a screamer. In short, I was – especially in my teens – the polar opposite of my brother. One day I came home from school after breaking up with my first “real” boyfriend. I cried a lot, lay on the couch and blubbered all afternoon. At some point I looked up from the pillow I was clutching to see my brother (about ten at the time) standing over me. “I brought you a popsicle,” he mumbled. “That always makes me feel better.” He handed it to me and walked silently away.
I have never forgotten that popsicle. My little brother, a kid I’d always known to be isolated and awkward, had reached out to me in the best way he knew how. It didn’t really matter if I wanted the popsicle or not (I did!). What mattered was that he’d shown me he was sorry I was hurting, that he’d expended the effort to think of something that might make me feel better.
We still use the popsicle as an inside joke. Anytime I’m feeling down, he always says, “Well, you could go get a popsicle.”
When I moved into my first apartment in Israel, where I moved on my own, my mom’s friend shipped two couches, a dining room table and chairs, lots of kitchen stuff, AND flowers in pots to my house, and cleaned my entire house. All while I was at work.
The first few months in Israel were really difficult, so to have someone do something like that was AMAZING.
Oh, these are all so sweet!
Oddly enough, an ex-boyfriend, D, who, while in the relationship, came off as inconsiderate, doing things like completely forgetting Valentine’s Day, has turned out to be the best and most reliable friend I’ve ever had.
After the first time we split up (mutual, but at my instigation), a previous ex – a narcissist and master manipulator I’d finally gotten away from after 6 years – started stalking me. D came over to my place when I was too scared to go outside or be there alone, and ended up letting me stay at his house for a couple weeks until everything blew over. He even took a day off work to drive me halfway across the state to a rinky-dink little festival, just to get out of town and get my mind off the stalker. We got back together after this, then both quickly realized it wasn’t going to work.
Even after the second breakup, and even after I briefly married someone shortly thereafter (which hurt D, even though we were long over by then), he has still been there for me ever since. We get together for lunch regularly, he got me tickets to a big formal shindig hosted by his employer then drove me and my friend home when we were too drunk to drive, and always offers to drive me to the airport (an hour+ trip each way for him), even for 6 am flights! I’m so lucky to have him in my life as a friend, even if we’re not meant to be more than that.
I’m with MKP – my family is not hugely verbal in our family. On top of that, my mother is a bit… irrational and self centred, so often damage control of her drowned out any relationship my dad and I might have. Still, we were close, although not deomonstrative (he died last year, so this is making me a bit weepy).
When I was 21 I went to China for a year. It was way harder than I expected, and I was pretty homesick for most of it, even though I loved it in other ways. My mother wrote me long letters about what she had been doing, and on one of them my dad drew a picture of a cormarant on a rock. He used to drive me to school every day, and we would go past a reservoir – there was one rock we called ‘bird rock’ and we used it to measure how full the reservoir was each day. He’d drawn this little picture and written ‘bird rock is almost covered’. That little drawing meant more to me than all my mother’s words – I knew he thought of me every day, and that we were always a part of each other’s lives, even miles away.
More recently, I’d say the support of my friends, real and virtual, in the year since my dad died. In particular I am thinking of one friend who I have met all of twice in real life. I bought a house recently and in the cooling off period I kind of freaked out – it was big and grown up and I didn’t know if I could handle everything that it meant by myself. She called me in the middle of a busy day with two kids at home and a conference call from work waiting, to give me some support.
And today I came back from painting the house with a bunch of my friends and I realised that I’m NOT alone. I might not have a partner, but as much as anyone can ever count on people to be there for them, I have those people. I am so lucky to have such genuine, strong connection and such lovely, helpful, caring people in my life.
SNIFF!