Valentines is the literal day I learned love.

I was born on December 7, 1977 and immediately relinquished by the person who cooked and bore me. According to the social workers’ records she was in denial pretty much the whole time I was in there and, once I emerged, she held me once, decided she was sure, and let me go.

I spent two months in foster care, as the charge of a person or people whose names I’ll never know, who fed and changed and (I assume) cuddled me. Who kept me alive and growing such that the periodic medical charts showed that I was progressing the way babies are generally expected to: eating, pooping, getting bigger.

Meanwhile, Charlie & Joanne Mazzola, who had been waiting on the adoption agency’s list since ’73 (after having tried on their own since they were married in ’69), waited still.