Valentine’s Day was a special day when I was a kid. The preparations started early. In school, during art, we transformed shoe boxes into decorated valentine’s boxes. They stayed in school until the big day. My mother and I would walk uptown to Woolworth’s where I’d take my time choosing the right valentine. Back then the valentines had a picture on the front with a funny saying, sometimes even a pun, and a blank back for signing. When I was really young, I used the whole back to sign my name so it snaked all the way around.
On the night before Valentine’s Day, my mother made the cookies for the class party. I signed my valentines, slid them into envelopes, wrote my classmates names on the front and put them in my school bag.
My friends and I chatted the whole walk to school about who would give us valentines and even who wouldn’t. We had hopes.
At school, the cookies and all the other goodies were covered and put away until the afternoon. Our decorated boxes stayed on the floor beside our desks. The valentines were safe in my school bag. I was supposed to pay attention to geography or English, or even worse, arithmetic, but I was too excited and so were many of my classmates, mostly the girls.
Finally, the time came and we put our boxes on our desks. When the nuns called us, we’d walk from row to row putting valentines in boxes. In those days the nicety of giving everyone a valentine had yet to come into play.
After all the valentines had been given out, the party started. We took turns going to the front to pick sweets. Mostly there were cookies, sugar cookies in the shape of a heart. We’d eat and we’d open all the valentines.
I carried my box on the way home as if it were gold. Once home and out of my school clothes, I’d look over my valentines again and show a few to my mother. She’d laugh at the puns, but I think she was just being nice. They were awful.
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