Marcia and Don Welch on the University of Nebraska-Kearney campus

Valentine Poem, 1996

The worlds through which you move
become more graceful through your moving.

In you the members of this family gather.
In you each voice is praised by name.

Your fate? Song marrowed in your bones.
Your love? Once tempered by despair.

In your presence we are wholly moved.
We cannot dance unless the air assumes your form.

–Don Welch to Marcia Welch

If I had to grade my dad as a gift-giver, I’d give him a generous “C.” He wasn’t particularly original, often buying similar gifts from the same store. The year he bought my mom an army green boucle winter coat trimmed with fake fur blew his “B” average. To say it was hideous is a gross understatement. My mom, ever gracious, received each gift with genuine gratitude, while the rest of us offered obligatory smiles and compliments.

What my dad lacked in gift-giving, he more than made up for in the poetry he wrote for my mom throughout their courtship and marriage. Without fail, my dad marked holidays and birthdays with poems tucked beneath a mirror clip on my mom’s vanity. On Valentine’s Day, an occasion celebrated with Hallmark greeting cards and heart-shaped boxes of Russell Stover chocolates, my dad out-Hallmarked and out-chocolated tradition, honoring my mother with poetry that he hoped moved her as much as we were “wholly moved” in her presence.

My father was best when he was “naming things.” In the final lines of his poem, “Still Hunting,” he writes:

When I’m dead, go on naming things well.
That’s all you need of integrity.

In a world that increasingly has little time or heart for naming things, this practice is sadly going the way of letter-writing. We generalize to save time, offering platitudes and cliches in our haste. We generalize for expediency and practicality. After all, who has the time or inclination to slog through details? Better to get to the point, to offer the gist of things. As I think about Valentine’s Day and the racks of generalized declarations of love in the greeting cards there, I’m reminded of what made my father’s poetry particularly good. Refusing to generalize, he named things well, paying homage to the people, places, and things he loved. Especially the people. Especially my mother. And in naming the things he loved and admired about her, he was saying, I see you. I see and love these things about you. I can’t dance unless “the air assumes your form.” In your presence–and yours alone–I am “wholly moved.”

In notes he’d made for his university course, The Philosophy of Poetry, my dad urged his students to develop the kind of eyes and sensibilities necessary to name and recognize these kinds of things:

Can the ordinary be extraordinary? What does it take to see it, appreciate it? The innocent eye can see nothing. The rushed eye may see a little more, but not much.

By the world’s standards, my mother was an ordinary woman, a stay-at-home mom who learned to make-do in a barely middle-class life. She taught herself upholstery because buying new furniture was a luxury our family couldn’t afford. She sewed and mended our clothes, learned to stretch a pound of hamburger, and hosted anyone who needed a place to stay and a homecooked meal. Truth be told, our lives are filled with such ordinary people who bless us in extraordinary ways. But if we don’t have the eyes to see them, if we don’t take the time to name the things that make them uniquely who they are, how will they know they’re extraordinary? How will they know the ways they bless us and others?

In the years after my father’s death, my mother regularly reread the letters he’d written her. In these letters, my father declared his love for her by naming the ways she’d changed him and how he viewed the world, by reminding her that he couldn’t imagine his life without her, and by recalling the miracle of their union. In these handwritten pages and the poetry he’d written for her, he hoped my mother would see herself as he saw her. In the mirror of his words, he wanted my mom to know her value and virtue.

We’ll soon mark another Valentine’s Day with dozens of roses, boxes of chocolates, and greeting cards in large, red envelopes. I’m proposing a new Valentine’s tradition, an add-on to the traditional gifts and cards we buy. What if we helped others see how extraordinary they are by naming the very things we love and respect about them? What if we took the time to name these things well, offering a mirror through which they could see themselves as we do? As my father contended, this would be truly honorable and very good.