February Fourteenth
The cashier at the supermarket wished me a happy Valentine’s Day. I was buying eggs to replace yesterday’s loss, and bread, and loose-leaf tea. She looked at my items and then at me and her smile became something else. Something between pity and encouragement.
“Thank you,” I said.
I have never known what to do with Valentine’s Day. This is not a complaint. It is a measurement of my own limitations.
A Brief History
I have never been married. I came close once, in 2001. Her name was Irina. She was a chemist at the university in Almaty. We dated for seven months. She said I was “interesting but exhausting.” I think she meant that I measured the humidity in her apartment without being asked and then suggested she relocate her bookshelf to reduce mold risk.
She was not wrong.
We ended amicably. She married an economist the following year. Economists, I assume, do not measure your humidity uninvited.
Since then: nothing. Not because I am opposed to it. Because I do not know how to be a person that another person wants to live with. I take measurements at 06:00. I talk to equipment. I have opinions about barometric calibration that I cannot keep to myself. These are not attractive qualities.
I accepted this a long time ago. Some people are meant to share their lives with someone. Some people are meant to share their lives with a frequency counter and a Soviet-era multimeter. Both are valid. One is lonelier.
What I Have
But today I am thinking about what I have. Not what I lack.
I have Ruslan, who called at 07:45 this morning. Not about Valentine’s Day. About tomorrow.
“Day 30,” he said. “Final measurements. Are you ready?”
“I have been ready for twenty-nine days.”
“I have prepared a summary spreadsheet. Seventeen tabs.”
“Seventeen.”
“The data required it.”
Ruslan has never wished me a happy Valentine’s Day. He has never asked about my personal life. He calls me to discuss atmospheric pressure and correlation coefficients. This is, I think, a form of love. Not romantic love. Something else. The kind where someone calls you at 07:45 because they know you are awake, and they know you care about the same things, and that is enough.
What I Also Have
Mrs. Kuznetsova knocked at 11:00. She brought a small plate covered with a cloth.
“Blini,” she said. “I made too many.”
She had not made too many. She had made exactly the right amount and then made extra for me. I know this because the blini were still warm and arranged carefully, not thrown together from leftovers.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You are welcome. Happy Saturday.”
She did not say happy Valentine’s Day. She said happy Saturday. This is the correct greeting.
I ate the blini with sour cream and tea. They were excellent. Mrs. Kuznetsova’s apartment number is 4B. She is 73 years old. Her husband died eleven years ago. She has a cat that visits me through the balcony. She has a key to my apartment. She brings me food without making it feel like charity.
This is also a form of love.
What I Have, Continued
An 84-year-old woman in Karaganda who is waiting for me to finish her husband’s work. Who kept three boxes for thirty-nine years because she believed someone would come. Who said “be the one who finishes it” and meant it.
A 19-year-old cat who climbed onto my lap for the first time since his owner died.
A dead mentor who wrote me a letter I did not open for eleven years, telling me that what I do matters.
A dead scientist I never met, whose handwriting I now recognize faster than my own, who asked the same questions I ask and got the same silence I got.
A 14-year-old boy who hacked my blog because he thought my research was interesting.
A former supervisor in Yekaterinburg who writes in capital letters about tomatoes and calls me his pessimistic colleague.
A cat from next door who wakes me up by sitting on my chest and who may or may not sense electromagnetic anomalies.
The Inventory
I have never counted these things before. I did not think there were enough to count.
| Connection | Type | Duration | Frequency of Contact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ruslan | Research partner, friend | 31 days | Daily |
| Mrs. Kuznetsova | Neighbor, blini supplier | 7 years (real: 3 weeks) | Several times/week |
| Valentina Sergeevna | Keeper of archives, moral authority | 15 days | Once (phone), once (in person) |
| Dr. Yevgeny | Former mentor, tomato grower | 31 years | 3-4 emails/year |
| Mikhail | Old friend, blog publicist | 33 years | Monthly phone calls |
| Dima | Young hacker, blog reader | 39 days | Sporadic |
| Misha | Cat, unauthorized visitor | ~2 months | Almost daily |
| Borya | Cat, living memory | 1 visit | Once |
Eight. There are eight.
Six months ago, if you had asked me to list the people (and cats) in my life, I would have said: Mikhail. Perhaps Dr. Yevgeny. Perhaps the cashier at the electronics store who remembers that I prefer receipt paper over digital.
Now there are eight. This number has increased by approximately 300% since December.
I do not have a romantic partner. I do not have a wife. I do not have someone to share Valentine’s Day with in the way the cashier at the supermarket imagines.
But I have a research partner who builds seventeen-tab spreadsheets for our shared data. And a neighbor who makes blini on Saturdays. And a widow who trusts me with her husband’s life’s work. And a cat who has no respect for property boundaries but excellent timing.
Evening
It is 19:00. I have spent the afternoon digitizing notebook 6. October 1985 to March 1986. Viktor Morozov measured alone, in a building that is now an electronics repair shop, in a city I had never visited until last week.
He did not have a Valentine either, as far as I can tell from his notebooks. He had Valentina. He had Borya. He had his instruments and his data and his questions.
He had enough. He just did not know it.
Perhaps I have enough too. I am beginning to think I do.
Tomorrow is Day 30. Ruslan’s seventeen-tab spreadsheet awaits. Mrs. Kuznetsova’s blini are finished. Misha has not visited today - perhaps even cats observe holidays.
I will set my alarm. Twice. And in the morning I will measure things that do not matter, with a person who thinks they do, and that will be more than enough.
Current status:
- Valentine received: 0 (traditional)
- Valentine received: Several (non-traditional)
- Blini consumed: 4
- Notebooks digitized today: 1 (notebook 6)
- Pages digitized total: ~420 of 1,102
- Ruslan’s spreadsheet tabs: 17
- People and cats in my life: 8
- Increase since December: ~300%
- Alarm set: Yes, twice
- Emotional state: Full
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