My First Valentine

by Donna Poole

I looked with a critical eye at My First Valentine. He seemed to have no sense of propriety. Did he not know that one simply did not appear in public with a red or black upper lip and chin, depending on which color crepe paper bow one had chewed that Sunday morning? And had he not heard the choir director tell us kids in cherub choir to fasten the snaps at the wrists of our little white angel robes?

What kind of mother does this kid have? Had I appeared on the platform week after week with red or black dye all over my face, and with my angel robe flapping at the wrists, my mother would have had plenty to say!

Come to think of it, why didn’t the cherub choir leader tell this little Johnnie Poole to stop chewing his crepe paper bow and fasten his snaps? Must be God wanted me to do the job. I was a strange little girl, painfully shy, but if I thought someone was doing something wrong, shyness aside, I was on a righteous crusade!

I edged closer. “Johnnie Poole,” I said, in my most authoritative preschool voice, “stop chewing that bow this minute and fasten your snaps.”

That Johnnie Poole gave me a look I was to learn only too well. With inscrutable, deep brown eyes he calmly stared directly at me, then looked away and kept right on chewing. Oh, but this little boy was about to learn I didn’t give up easily. Every week I gave him the same lecture. Every week he gave me the same look and kept doing what he wanted to do. It was infuriating.

I remember our first real argument, several years later. Our dads were counting the offering after church.

“I can spell my name. Want to see?”

He wrote on a blackboard, “John.”

“That is totally wrong. Listen to me.” I pronounced his name over and over. “Do you hear any ‘h’? I didn’t think so. Your name is spelled J-O-N.”

He looked at me calmly, erased his name, and said, “I guess I know how to spell my own name.” And he walked away.

See? Infuriating.

At some point we must have decided we liked each other, but I don’t remember any conversation about it. I do remember we held hands behind the pole in children’s church until Johnnie Poole decided it wasn’t the right thing to do; his standards always were higher than mine. Except when it came to chewing crepe paper.

A boy whose dad also counted money offered to marry us. He said he knew how to do it because his older sister had just gotten married. We were bored; the money-counting took a long time, so we agreed.

The boy finished the ceremony and said, “You may now kiss your bride.”

“I’m not kissing no girl!”

“I’m not letting him kiss me!”

Our officiant was distressed. “But, then you can’t be married.”

“Okay!”

Our divorce or annulment was quite painless. We paid our officiant nothing, and without even thanking him, we ran off to play with our friends.

After fourth grade our family moved and left that church. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Johnnie Poole.

Dad’s job transferred him back to the area the summer before eighth grade.

One Sunday a boy I knew said, “Someone wants to sit with you in church. He’s really handsome and nice, but he’s too shy to ask you himself, so he sent me.”

“Who is it?” I wasn’t interested in any boys. Still, I was curious about this handsome, shy stranger.

“Well, it’s Johnnie Poole.”

“Johnnie Poole!” I laughed. “I’ve known him all my life. You tell him if he ever wants to sit with me in church, he better ask me himself!”

Moving time came all too soon, and my parents were distressed. Moving was expensive and emotionally draining on the whole family.

“I can’t understand why God would move us back here just for three months,” Dad said.

None of us could, but looking back, I can see why.

It was our last Sunday at church.

“Goodbye,” Johnnie said.

He left, circled around, and returned. “Well, I guess this is goodbye.”

He repeated that several times. Finally, he asked, “Is it okay if I write to you?”

“Sure!”

And that began a weekly correspondence of half-page letters. His always started with, “How are you? I am fine,” They ended with, “Your friend, Johnnie Poole.”

I grew older and began dating the way most girls did in the 1960’s, but the weekly letters continued. I never thought of Johnnie Poole as anything more than a friend and had no reason to think he felt any thing but friendship for me. True, he did send Valentines, starting in 1963, the “Thinking of You” kind, signed “Yours truly,” or, “Your friend.”

When I got my senior pictures, I enclosed a small one in a letter to him, and he did the same for me. I gave my large picture to my boyfriend at the time.

During my senior year, the choir from John’s Ithaca High School went on tour, and one of their stops was my high school, Maine-Endwell. Each choir member from my high school signed up to house a student from Ithaca.

“I got some kid named John Poole,” my boyfriend told me.

“Oh, you’ll like him. He’s nice. I’ve known him for as long as I can remember.”

After the Ithaca choir left for their next stop, two things happened. First, my boyfriend told me, “That John Poole looked at me real funny when he saw your picture by my bed. He sounded kind of mad and asked, ‘Where’d you get that picture?’ I told him you were my girlfriend.”

The second thing was a very upset letter written on hotel stationary where the Ithaca choir was staying next. I was shocked to find out that for all those years Johnnie had considered me his girlfriend and felt betrayed when he discovered I was dating someone else.

In my return letter I tried to reason with Johnnie and explain I had no idea he thought of me as a girlfriend, and he couldn’t assume a girl knew how a guy felt if he’d never told her. That went about as well as our argument when I’d tried to tell him how to spell his name.

It was inevitable. Johnnie and I started dating in college in 1966 and married in 1969.

It hasn’t all been hearts and flowers, moonlight and roses for us. The first time he said, “I love you,” I responded, “But how does a person really know something like that for sure?”

In our fifty years of marriage we’ve faced physical, spiritual, emotional, and financial challenges. Sometimes we’ve been so busy we’ve almost lost each other in life’s shuffle. The wisdom that came with age taught us not to be so busy reaching out with both hands to help others that we forgot each other. Now we try to hold hands and reach out to a needy world with one free hand each. Still, we can get so busy we feel like we should introduce ourselves at the end of the day before we kiss goodnight.  

God has been good to give me all these years with My First Valentine. When I tell John what to do, he still looks at me calmly with those inscrutable brown eyes and does exactly what he wants, but I haven’t given up trying. I’ll probably be bossy to my last breath. I hope he’s with me when I take it, and I hope he knows how grateful I am for all his years of faithful love, even if he still doesn’t know how to spell his name.

I mean, say it out loud and listen to yourself. John. John. Do you hear an “h”? I didn’t think so.