A few years ago the valentine card nightmare began. Get list of kid names. Write up cards. Have young child decorate with stickers or make other mark upon card. Keep doing yoga breathing, understanding it does not have to be perfect.

This year … not so much. The teachers encouraged us to let the kids write up the cards; decorating the envelopes and doing the names. Which is fine. I’m all for planning to let the kids do it. But the kid with the shaky block handwriting is not going to fit a four-syllable name on a 2” by 3” card (yes, I measured those superhero cards) by any stretch of the imagination.

On the one hand, the notes say “let the kids write the name on the envelopes”. That is, parents, back off, let the kids do this! Fine, I say. But there are no envelopes. Not anymore. So what to do? I stretched reality and mounted the little hologram superheroes on a big decorative page that accommodates my beginner’s shaky hand.

While the eldest is practicing his handwriting, the youngest is moping around, touching everything, intensely interested, and genuinely feeling left out. The night as been punctuated with my interjecting “Stop that!” and “No touch!” and “Leave it alone!” between card-addressing instructions.

She finally finds something to do. Lie on the couch with a harmonica. Since this is infinitely more enjoyable than pushing her fingers away from scissors and markers and other valendentia, I shut my yap and try not to laugh, wishing I had a recording device nearby.

“I can’t …”

(blow in and out on harmonica)

“I can’t …”

(blow in and out on harmonica)

“Not for me, no touch …”

(blow in and out on harmonica)

“I can’t do dat …”

(blow in and out on harmonica)

I think she’s got a talent, people. I really do.

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