It’s snowing and it’s getting dark, but with my binoculars I can see the mailbox from my dining room window. It’s big black face bravely peeking out from under a mountainous wall of white.

It’s St. Valentine’s Day, and here’s some history I’ll bet you didn’t know. Around 270 A.D., Emperor Claudius the Cruel wanted more young men in the military and he thought they were too attached to their wives and families, so he banned all marriages and engagements in Rome.

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When Valentine defied his order and secretly married young lovers anyway, Claudius had him arrested, and he was condemned to be beaten to death and then beheaded.

So after his death, the church made him a saint. The judges in Alabama who are defying the governor’s gay marriage bans this week should take that into consideration. No point in losing your head.

So here I am waiting for a valentine card. I already know that She, who loves all of us, is my admirer, and I have already received valentine cards from two daughters. We’re big card senders in this family. It’s a tradition — no event escapes a Hallmark: get wells, sympathy, birthdays, First Communion and bar and bat mitzvahs, holidays of all kinds.

But on St. Valentine’s Day, and that’s the way those of us who were Catholic-school educated define it, you’re supposed to get a card from a secret admirer, and I haven’t had one yet.

I’m not sure who started that tradition. Gandhi, I think.

In 2009, I got one signed “A secret admirer.” It was a simple card, not fussy, in a nice red envelope. It was kind of nice. This continued up until 2011, and then they stopped coming.

I’m thinking my S.A. has stopped admiring me because of something I wrote, or that she or he is dead or in prison without mail privileges. Maybe she/he was someone I knew in the market or the coffee shop, someone I was kind to, or simply turned on. Who knows? And then I might have said something or just didn’t say something at all and this person, my S.A., was hurt and dumped me. Life is funny, someone once said. Judas Iscariot, I think.

I remember with fondness my first real valentine. In kindergarten at Saints Mary and Joseph, we made them for our mothers, big red hearts cut out of heavy paper with a sentiment clumsily written in crayon, but we didn’t exchange any in class.

In first grade we got to exchange. Sister Theresa insisted that they must all say “secret admirer,” no real names. I guess that was the standard Catholic device to discourage early sexual attachments.

Despite her admonition, Mary Lister sent me one and signed it. My mother put it in my scrapbook. I still have it. I still remember how sweet Mary was and how she was always well dressed with shiny Mary Jane shoes and white tights. I went all the way to the fifth grade with Mary but never got another card from her. I guess we had that one kindergarten moment, and then it just burned out. Maybe she just wasn’t that into me after the first grade. I’m told that’s traditionally a rough year.

In those days we always had a big box on Sister’s desk, covered in red paper with a slot on top for the cards, and then Sister would dump them out on her desk and call our names. Not every one got one. That had to be tough. Except for one year, I always got at least one. In the fifth year I got one from Lawrence, can’t remember his last name. My late sister Rita told me that he became a dance instructor with the Arthur Murray franchise. True story.

One year, my sister Eileen, an artist, made the box and decorated it in cut out lace and little red paper hearts all over it for my classroom. Sister didn’t seem to mind having her work usurped, and everyone applauded it. Funny thing — it was my special box and I was very proud of it, but that was the year I didn’t get one.

The mailman is here. With these binoculars I can get a pretty good close up. It looks like all white envelopes, probably bills.

Oh well, maybe next year. No point in losing my head.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.