Around the Kitchen Table: A Valentine memory
Real love can be found almost anywhere and in any era. Every February, thoughts turn to love, flowers, candy hearts and sugary sweet cards. Even though Valentine’s Day has been around for centuries, it’s only recently become the extravagant celebration it is today.
You can blame ingenuity and the irresistible urge to commercialize almost anything. In the 1800s, a British fellow named Richard Cadbury began to experiment with making heart-shaped boxes of chocolates for lovers to exchange. Around that same time, American entrepreneur Esther Howland started a business making elaborate postcards to exchange on Valentine’s Day. By the early 20th century, a company named Hall Brothers started producing more affordable mass-produced Valentines with envelopes “for a more private communication.” (This company eventually became Hallmark – and the rest is history.)
Today, billions of dollars are spent on candy, flowers and cards on Valentine’s Day. It makes my head hurt and my credit cards want to hide just thinking about all that money being spent. But so you won’t think I’m a curmudgeon when it comes to romance, I’ll tell you I am over the moon happy for my friend Janet. After 50 years, she and her high school sweetheart, Greg, finally tied the knot this Valentine’s Day!
Stories like theirs make me give the holiday a bit more credit for happy endings and romantic tales.
However, I’m still wondering how we got to the place we are today with such excess. When I recall the simple ways we marked the holiday during my childhood, our modest celebrations seem austere by comparison.
In grade school, we decorated small brown or white paper bags with red construction paper hearts and maybe a white or pink paper doily. We wrote our names on our bags and the week before Valentine’s Day, the teacher would thumbtack them on the bulletin board just below our black and white silhouettes of Abraham Lincoln, with the top of the bags hanging slightly open.
The teacher designated a specific time every day that week for you to place your cards in everyone’s bag as you brought them from home. The excitement built as the day grew closer for us to take our bags home. We were definitely distracted from our studies that week. Every time the teacher allowed one or two of us to deliver our cards, the rest of us would surreptitiously watch to see if our sack was gifted or passed over. It was an anxious time. No one wanted to face just a few cards or worse, none at all. No one wanted to be last or left alone.
There was a boy in my class that rode my bus. He lived out past our farm and from the looks of the rundown house and his shabby, but clean, clothes, John’s family was poor. He was a kind, shy sort, one who tried to “disappear,” but there was no hiding from those rows of paper bags. His was up there alongside all the others.
As the week went on, some sacks bulged with the weight of their cards, while others, like John’s, remained noticeably slack. Back then, you could buy a package of Valentines especially made for giving out in a classroom. Each box contained around 30 cards, plus a special one for your teacher, and an “extra nice” one for that special someone. I remember thinking very carefully which card I would give to each one of my classmates. All of the cards in those packs were different. Often they were decorated with animals, cute poems or clever wording. Some even had glitter or other embellishments. It took a while to laboriously print the names on the TO: line and put mine on the FROM: line for all twenty-something of my class.
Finally the big day arrived and it was time to take our decorated (and hopefully filled) sacks home. The room mothers brought home-baked cookies and boxes of candy hearts or suckers for each student. We celebrated with punch and an early release from our regular schedule. I remember taking my bag and feeling a considerable heft. I breathed a small sigh of relief. Determined to wait until I was home to go through my bag privately, I carefully tucked it into my satchel and snapped it shut. I didn’t want any witnesses to my joy or disappointment if the contents weren’t to my liking.
I noticed that John hung back until almost all of the sacks were retrieved. His head was down as he gathered his sack and hastily retreated to his desk to await the final bell. Mercifully, for the both of us (the suspense was killing me), it soon rang and in a short while we were on the chilly bus ride home.
John always sat at the back with the older kids. None of them ever bothered him. He was a giant for his age, and I guess they didn’t want to test him. Before I got off the bus, I glanced around to see if he had looked in his sack yet, but he was staring out the window. I guess I would never know if he found it. No matter – I was glad I did it anyway.
As the bus pulled away, I heard a tapping sound at one of the windows and looked back to see John with the tiniest smile on his face, his hand cupped around the special card from my box of Valentines. I smiled back and he was gone. It is still one of my favorite Valentine memories.
by Tamra M. Bolton
