Cherish is the Word Valentines come in different shapes and forms

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Who is your valentine today? Usually, it’s someone we love in a special way – whether it’s the boy sitting at the next desk or the person you wake up next to each morning. Sometimes it’s a mother, a daughter, a boyfriend. I have a friend who is sure to give her dog a special treat to celebrate the occasion.

Valentine’s Day took off in this country in the 19th century and has become one of the best-selling annual holidays of the greeting card year. It’s when people get engaged, when they hook up, when they reaffirm their vows.

Has the holiday changed over the years? Has it changed as our cultural practices in relationships have changed?

Yes, and no.

My favorite Valentine’s Day couple met when they were 14 and 15, lived through one world war and several others, and still flirt with each other well into their grandparenting days. It takes my breath away to hear their stories of romance and devotion. I bet today is a sweetheart day for them.

But there are other valentine stories that interest me, too, ones that pull at my heart and force me to stop and consider the most important demand of love: simply to cherish another person. The following stories are about people who understand that and who live it.

First comes baby

Izabelle McLean, the 10-month-old daughter in the Toothaker-McLean family, came first. It’s not that Taneale Toothaker and Chris McLean, who live together in Hampden, didn’t love each other. They seemed perfectly matched from the start.

“When I first saw Chris, I thought he was cute,” said Taneale.

That was two years ago when they were both working on a construction crew, and she was too shy to reveal to him that she thought he was attractive. So she told his friend.

“Eventually, I worked up enough nerve to ask her out,” said Chris.

They went to dinner and to the bowling alley – although they didn’t do much bowling. Mostly, they talked, and at the end of the night, each considered the other second-date material.

Not long after, when Taneale unexpectedly got pregnant, the young couple was surprised and scared. There was no talk of marriage, but shortly after, Taneale lost the baby. By that time, something had deepened in the relationship.

“I noticed right off that he was thoughtful with his family and would do anything for someone who was close to him,” said Taneale, who is now 28.

“She’s very family-oriented,” said Chris, 24. “She made me want to be a better person.”

Taneale got pregnant again, and this time they got Izabelle.

“If you need a little determination in your life, you’ve got it right there,” said Chris, pointing to his toddling, bright-eyed daughter. He’s a stay-at-home dad while it’s too cold to work construction, and Taneale, who was recently promoted to community employment supervisor at OHI (formerly Opportunity Housing Inc.), works during the day.

Will they get married?

“We talk about it,” said Taneale. But there are other, more pressing, goals that light up her face: another child, a house in the country, a horse for Izabelle.

It’s hard to say for sure who the valentine is in this household, but a good bet would be the little one, peeking around the curtain and giggling at her adoring parents.

“I hope everything for her,” said Chris. “Everything.”

Moored together

Nancy MacKay had no desire to sail her 22-foot sloop from Penobscot Bay to Casco Bay. But when she learned that Ardis Cameron had a house with a mooring in South Portland, her interest in the voyage increased. Nancy was 50 at the time, Ardis 40.

“We got together and liked each other right away,” said Nancy, a psychotherapist and vocalist. “I’m fairly shy. So we maintained that pretext that we were getting together to talk about the mooring. I got trapped in my own macho story, but we actually did end up sailing the boat down to Portland. It was a three-day cruise, and it was wonderful.”

“Before Nancy, I had been with men. So I wasn’t sure this was going to work out,” said Ardis, an associate professor of American and New England studies at the University of Southern Maine. “But when I met Nancy, there was something about her smile. She has a fabulous smile, and she’s very smart and very tall. I’m a believer in chemistry now. I was totally swept off my feet. When we went to dinner, we didn’t talk about the mooring at all.”

Earlier this month, Nancy and Ardis celebrated their 15th anniversary. They split their time between the house in South Portland and Nancy’s family home in Deer Isle, where they spend summers.

Every day, the women said, is Valentine’s Day for them. Almost as a testament, Ardis has cherishingly saved the white wool sweater Nancy gave her on their first Valentine’s Day together.

“First we fell in love and then it grew stronger,” said Ardis. “It turned out that she was even a better, nicer person than I thought.”

It also turned out that they loved many of the same things. Delicious food, the ocean, reading aloud to one another, trips to Paris, and always music. A dinner party at their house – “the ultimate occasion” said Nancy – is nothing short of pungent French cheeses, osso buco, fruit tarts, arias in the background, feisty conversation and, on special nights, Armagnac made the year Ardis graduated from high school.

The secret to their strong relationship, they said, grows out of a deep delight in one another.

“We get a huge charge out of each other,” said Nancy. “We have a lot of fun, and we laugh a lot.”

“I have a strong respect for who Nancy is,” said Ardis, who grew up in New Jersey. “One of my favorite things is to listen to Nancy sing and play the piano. And I love to garden.”

“And I love to watch her garden,” said Nancy.

With same-sex marriages laws gathering steam in Massachusetts, do they hope to tie the knot some day?

“Nancy was born in Maine. So there’s a sense that we would like to do it here in her home state,” said Ardis. “I think it’s very important that it’s available. We want to take advantage of it as a legal security, and we like anything that affirms our relationship.”

Valentines forever

Paul Klenowski used to leave a red rose on his wife’s pillow – for no occasion at all. On Valentine’s Day, he would leave a dozen red roses plus a teddy bear on the pillow.

“The day would never go by without being a great thing,” said Valerie Klenwoski. “There were always flowers. There was always something special. It was always celebrated. Sometimes I would get in the car and there would be a rose and a love letter waiting for me.”

Paul was the romantic in the relationship, said Valerie. They were sweethearts in high school, in the days when he hitchhiked 20 miles to see her in the evenings and then 20 miles home at night. When he was in Colorado in the service for 21/2 years, they exchanged love letters. They married when he came back – a crowded hippie wedding on Verona Island – and had two children.

A year ago, Valerie lost her valentine to Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Last year, she and the kids – Paul Jr., 25, who goes by PJ, and Jessie, 18 – had the hardest Valentine’s Day they ever hope to have as a family.

“It just was what it was,” said Valerie, who is 47 and lives with Jessie in Bucksport. “The kids were so sweet because they knew it was a special day. My son didn’t know if it was the right thing to do or not, but he left me a bouquet of flowers on my pillow. He knew that’s what his father would have done. This Valentine’s Day is going to be very, very hard, but my son and daughter, and my son’s best friend are taking me out to dinner.”

Will Valerie look for a new valentine?

“Paul is still my valentine,” she said. “That may sound weird, but in my heart, he is still my valentine. Someday I’ll let my heart open back up, but it’s hard now.”

She recently went out with friends and was paired with another man. It wasn’t a date, she insisted. Just a night out.

“It made me feel like I could be open again,” said Valerie, whose husband would have been 48 this year. “My heart is ready to go on. I know he would want me to go on. And that night, I saw that I could go on. But I’m in no hurry.”

Just before Paul died, he and Valerie were sitting on their back deck listening to music. When their song – “Get Closer” by Seals & Crofts – came on, Paul, who was beginning to lose his mobility, reached for his wife.

“He grabbed my arms and waltzed with me on the deck,” said Valerie. “How many people have that?”

I do

If you hear wedding bells over the weekend, think of Annalee Astbury and Tim Grindal. At 22 and 26, respectively, they will exchange vows Feb. 14 n front of nearly 300 people – most of whom are family. With big Maine names like Astbury and Grindal, what do you expect?

“We compared guest lists,” joked Annie, “just to make sure that we didn’t have any family members in common.”

They don’t.

What the Blue Hill residents do have in common is a sparkling desire to be together. That came on strong, and it came on fast after they met at an outdoor party one summer.

“A couple of our friends noticed we liked each other and my friends were egging me on and his were egging him on,” said Annalee, who goes by Annie. “But then he didn’t call for a long time.”

“Yeah, like a day,” corrected Tim.

“He was playing it cool,” she added with one of her full, happy smiles.

But he was also leaving town – headed for Florida to do carpentry with a friend. Off he went, leaving behind Annie, who had just graduated from George Stevens Academy, where he had graduated a few years before.

Two weeks later, she packed up her car and drove to Tampa with a girlfriend. She moved in with Tim, and they haven’t been apart, they calculate, for more than five days ever since.

After a year in Florida, they returned to Maine so Annie could go to college in Portland. One cold winter evening, he asked her to go for a walk with him in Deering Oaks Park and right there, in the chill of the night, he dropped to his knee and held out a ring with three dazzling diamonds.

“When he asked me, I cried because it felt overwhelming,” said Annie, who is a real estate sales agent. “He was looking right into my eyes, and I was scared and nervous. The words coming out of his mouth gave me goose bumps and I knew he was waiting for an answer.”

“I don’t think being married will change us much,” said Tim, a carpenter in the winter and lobster fisherman in the summer. “I guess we’ll be a little more grown up, a little more and little less like our parents. It’s more of a promise, but it’s not like it wasn’t there already.”

Annie and Tim are writing their own vows for the ceremony, which will be officiated by Annie’s aunt and attended by five groomsmen in tuxedos and five bridesmaids in maroon dresses.

“It will be love, honor and my part will be cherish,” said Annie. “What I’ve learned in life is to cherish. There’s always going to be a fight, but you don’t have to go away or go to sleep mad. I hope we can hold onto that. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it that way.”

Annie and Tim are young, but they’ve made up their minds, they’ve grown up together and they want more of each other: children, a house on land they recently purchased, good times.

Wish them well. Wish them a lifetime of Happy Valentine’s Days.