Feb 9, 2024 4 min read

Valentines Day is the pink and brown cousin of Halloween.

By this time next week, we’ll have poked the bottoms of the last of the lonely chocolates in the heart-shaped cardboard boxes, hoping that the square one is caramel and not something oozy like a cherry.

When you’re not a chocoholic-as I am not- Valentines Day doesn’t hold the excitement of Halloween. That October holiday has chocolate, yes, but it also has the fruity, chewy candy that makes the days after more enjoyable.

A woman who doesn’t love chocolate is an outlier, for sure. One of my best friends is so enamored of chocolate that she has stashes of candy bars around the house, the handful of Hershey kisses scenting her lingerie drawer like a sachet.

While I enjoy a good piece of chocolate cake when someone else bakes it, and come to think of it, that chocolate coating on the Entenmanns donuts has a satisfying crackle, I don’t buy or seek out chocolatey things.

Because it’s too sweet? Maybe. Or the texture is a bit off? Perhaps. More likely, I taught myself not to want chocolate back when I was a preteen, believing the old wive’s tale that chocolate would make my face break out. And to think that during all those years of worry, I actually had very nice skin. (Now, not so much.)

Even without a love of chocolate, Valentines Day held a secret magic when I was young. We’d buy a package of little cards featuring hearts and cartoon animals, saving the best for our cafeteria buddies and that one (and only) boy we all liked. We’d sign the back in red pencil, stuff the card into the little envelope, lick it shut and write the name on the front. At school the next day, we’d walk around the room, playing postman as we jammed the cards into the slot atop all the hand-decorated shoe boxes.

Sometimes there was candy in those little envelopes, a couple of hard pastel hearts with words on them. The hearts with the words (ital) you send me (end ital) always confused me. I understand now that they were song lyrics, but at age eight I had to wonder: Was that a good thing? Could it possibly mean that our one acceptable 3rd grade boy actually liked me?

Occasionally there would be a red, heart-shaped lollipop. Always inpatient, I’d crunch through the whole thing on the bus ride home. And then, my sisters and I would sit on the living room floor and spread the contents of our Valentines boxes onto the carpet, picking through all the little candy hearts, opening the little envelopes and finding out which classmate sent us what. In the flaky world of third-grade romance, we were still developing our woman’s intuition. If I got two little candy hearts in my card, did that mean he likes me? And why didn’t George give me little pink hearts?

If I remember correctly, that was his name. George. Smart, a bit aloof, good at kickball, shirt tucked neatly into his pants. Not weird like all the others. The hearts would have been symbolic, though, because I didn’t like them. They were too hard, too sweet and they were mint-flavored.

Occasionally in the living room haul we’d find a little heart wrapped in red foil. Inside, some cheap milk chocolate, a special treat tossed into the box by some anonymous person. Who could that have been? The boy we liked? One of the many we didn’t? I unwrapped the foil and popped the heart into my mouth, not particularly enjoying the flavor, but savoring the romance mystery.