Valentine

"Vân, here you go!"
My dad handed me a tiny package.
I looked at him closely.
Like most Vietnamese fathers, he rarely gave gifts. Not even on birthdays.

"It might be helpful when you bake," he explained.
Then he disappeared into the garage.
I slowly opened the plain white box.

The priest said St. Valentine didn't exist in this morning's homily.
And this is the reason why the Roman Catholic Church does not include his name on the liturgical calendar. Perhaps Father was concerned that his flock would reduce today's holidays to outward signs of affection.

Or he didn't realize that the Libreria Editrice Vaticana (Vatican's official publishing house) in its Martyrologium Romanum stated that the "martyr Valentinus the Presbyter and those with him at Rome" remains in the list of saints proposed for veneration by all Catholics. He's just not in the universal calendar.

It wasn't a box of chocolates.
Or a hand-written letter.
A battery-operated mixer.

My parents were traditional Vietnamese.
That meant their affection was deep, barely perceptible, and ultimately practical.
It also meant we didn't own a mixer.
Even after 30+ years in the United States.

When I come home and I want to do any kind of baking, I borrow the mixer from my sister-in-law's house. Dad had seen me lugging Chị Mai's mixer back and forth between our houses.

The beater was about six-inches high.
"What do you think?"
An impish smile played on my dad's face.

"Enough to bake you a one-inch cake."
He laughed uproariously and went to work in the garden.

My dad will never make the universal list of modern, open-minded, tech-savvy fathers.
He's the one that never stood out in the crowd of fathers.
It would be easy to set him into the ranks of forgottenness.
Like St. Valentine.

So many legends of St. Valentine exist that it was easy to relegate him to illusion.
Nevertheless, in all of them, Valentine gives himself as a martyr.
For the love of Jesus.

And that's how he came to be known as patron of lovers.
A valentine given is a valentine received.
Did you give a valentine today?

Photo credit: www.kitchenniche.ca
More on St. Valentine: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=159