14 February

Ferocious Kind of Love

Tarnow, Poland, 2009

It’s February 14th and all those fuzzy and shiny symmetrical hearts remind me of my friend who’s going to have valve-replacement surgery in a couple of days. We’re nine time zones apart, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference. We’ve always talked on the phone, even when I could bicycle to his house.

When I called him yesterday, he said, “It’s a pig valve.” It wasn’t a statement I was expecting to hear, perhaps not a statement anyone is ever expecting to hear.

“A what?”

I may have been a little sluggish on the uptake, but he wasn’t. He said “pig” again in English, then repeated “pig” in Russian. I knew he was going to ask me how to say pig in Polish. I remembered how to say “pork,” but not pig. My students get the English mixed up, too, they assured me when I asked them later.

When I heard the expression, “Free as a wild pig,” in Polish, I pictured the emancipated swine flapping unlikely wings and getting effectively, if perhaps not gracefully, airborne, waving goodbye to whatever ties pigs down.

Another of Poland’s porcine residents is known as dzik. Everyone I’ve spoken to here can recite a children’s rhyme about the dzik’s bad disposition and sharp tusks, and the strategy of climbing a tree should one have the misfortune to encounter the beast on an otherwise pleasant outing.

I renamed Valentine’s Day “Javelina Day” a while back. The words aren’t quite anagrams, but they’re sneaking up on it. I doubted that the creature also known as a peccary had ever appeared on a greeting card associated with affection. But the nearsighted, diffident javelina may soon be winding up its stint as the antidote to Valentine’s Day.

Suddenly, I’m picturing a dzik with little lacy hearts impaled on its fearsome tusks as it rampages through displays of chocolates and champagne. Lately, it’s a ferocious kind of love I’m looking for.