Happy Valentine’s Day

“Love and Laughter go hand in hand.  One satisfies the heart and the other satisfies the soul”  – Kelly Melang

Wolfgang was off excited because today is Valentine’s Day at school!  All week, the children brought bringing in valentines and putting them in the mail cubbies and today they get to look at the loot!  He said he got a glimpse of Lindsey’s valentines and they had a TOY!!  Ahhh, it’s so nice to still have those small innocent children when they get excited that the valentine is a TOY!

I thought back to what Valentine’s days I remember.  I remember writing that one valentine for that one specific person in my class, namely a boy who really didn’t know that I existed.  I took out the sets of cards and read through my three available choices.  I agonized about which one to send him.  Does “You rock” sound better than “Have a Groovy Valentine’s Day?”  Will he understand that I like him if I send him the “Have a Rocking Valentine’s Day?”  I was so glad when I found the one special Valentine in the pack.   Then I sign my name to it.  Did I sign it in a dorky way?  What will he think about the heart I drew after signing my name?  Now I laugh because he probably was only interested in the ones that had toys attached.

No Valentine’s day is complete without the candy hearts.  You always got that box of candy hearts.  Another agonizing decision of which candy heart to hand out to whom in my class.  I couldn’t give any of the “Kiss Me” hearts out, what if they really tried to kiss me? This was before the “Email Me” and “Fax Me” were part of the candy heart collection.  It was always hard to decide who to give candy hearts to and there was a boy or two in middle school that I just snuck the candy heart on their desk so they wouldn’t know it came from me.  Of course I couldn’t give out any of the yellow candy hearts, well, because I liked those.

As a Mom, I now look forward to the construction paper cards, and crafts that come home from school on this holiday.  We make cards for their classes and I smile as they agonize over that one special card that goes to that one special friend.   I enjoy going through the Valentine’s candy as much as I enjoy going through the Halloween candy.  I had to work hard to convince my son that he really didn’t want the mini M&M’s, that sharing was a good thing to do and he could share those mini M&M’s with his mother.  He didn’t even look at the cards, just separated out the candy and tossed the cards back in his bag.  He got all embarrassed when I read a card to him from a “girl” in his class.  My little boys are players, they’re at that stage where there’s a different “girlfriend” each week.

Now I’m married and know exactly who my sweetheart is, we don’t need a holiday to tell each other “I love you.”  Luckily he doesn’t like candy hearts too much and will always give me all of the yellow ones.

As I ended every entry in my 6th grade diary, “Love Will Keep Us Together.”  Anyone remember that song?