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Loving my discussions this week with friends about Valentine memories from their own childhood… like those of a pal who grew up in the UK and says how it was always such an exciting time, wondering if she’d get a card… (wait for it)… in the MAIL. Says she’d sometimes get two, which was a huge deal, even though one of them was always from David Thingy who wrote in green ink. You sent out only a very few, she says, and always unsigned, no identifying marks at all. After which came the fun of classroom chats about who got what and from possibly whom and maybe even a bit of show and tell with the cards. She ends by asking if I have any tips for making pastry.

Another friend thinks it’s possible she gave a card to everyone in her class because her mother thought it would be a good idea, but she’s not sure if that’s why she did it and doesn’t actually have other memories about the day.

Someone else says that while they were not forced to give every classmate a card, she thinks it was encouraged, not that it made any difference, she says, and then remembers there being a sort of tacit competition in terms of how many cards one got. (She closes by saying that since she’s not feeling particularly traumatized by the memory she probably got enough to see her ‘down the middle of the road’ as it were.)

The friend who says her family moved so often during grade school that she was always the outsider and she was grateful for the ‘everyone gets a card’ rule otherwise it would have been just another devastating thing.

Another person’s memory was giving everyone a card but making or choosing the nicest valentines and/or writing special messages for the friends she liked best so there was still an element of doing something extra for special friends, but presumably the others didn’t realize that.

Someone says the day always made them sad, a reminder of who is popular and who isn’t and regardless of cards because that didn’t change reality.

Only one person mentions edibles. They would include in the envelope with the card, a heart-shaped candy that had a little message on it. Not sweetarts apparently, but some other kind of message’d bon bon.

And a friend with lifelong mental health challenges (who I’ve written about before) begins by talking about the advances in awareness of childhood trauma and then says despite those benefits there is still the giant problem of society… and that while he doesn’t have any special memories of valentines day, he does believe that the number of cards a child gets isn’t the cause of trauma… that the cause of trauma in this case is the way society views the number of cards received, the way it defines winners and losers, and how it teaches us to be defined by that.

As for my own memories… in my class we put our names on envelopes and attached them to our desks or possibly in some other part of the classroom and you’d walk around, ‘delivering’ cards into whatever envelopes you wanted. Some kids got a million, others did not. I was not among those who ever got a million, but I don’t recall being sad about that. At all. In fact I do remember thinking, wow…. I got five! or whatever… when I was expecting two. And only some were signed, most were not. All of it quite thrilling indeed.

But the best part was always the cards themselves. I loved the goofy pics and sayings, loved choosing who would get which. Not sure if they still sell them. They looked like this:

I love the diversity of memories and how the day resonates with everyone in different ways, the way it has been, and continues to be, experienced with a wide variety of emotions… because what’s for sure is that this day is not in any way merely about the fluff that marketing would have us buy into.

Here’s to spreading some quiet joy… in whatever way you choose.

♥