Monday, February 15, 2010

Memoir Monday ~ Valentine Reflections

Photobucket

Since Valentine's Day was yesterday, let's explore those recollections for Memoir Monday.

What are your strongest memories of Valentine's Day?
Any special traditions associated with the day?
Foods? Activities?
Favorite Valentine's cards?


Can't wait to see what you reveal!


For me....

Valentine's Day stuff is a product of our school systems, I think. From an early grade, students learn to apply glue to paper and lace to make valentines. There's a party, so each student has to give a small card to every other student. I noticed when we started homeschooling, Valentine's Day became a lot more fun because we could tread more lightly and with less frou-frou stuff.

My strongest Valentine's Day memories are not of glue, glitter, or paper hearts. The first V-day, The Pilot Guy and I dated was one busy weekend. That year, Valentine's fell on a Saturday. The same Saturday of Master Follies at Lubbock Christian, a huge annual performance event. It just so happened that was also homecoming, too, with all it's related festivities. We were the only hired photographers on campus and busy doesn't even begin to describe that weekend. A yearbook deadline and the regular weekly deadlines for the campus newspaper were also a part of the mix. We worked long and hard to cover all of our responsibilities, something close to sixty hours each within a three or four day period between our actual photography duties, plus darkroom time. By the way, I got paid a whopping $1.67 per hour in those days...I don't remember if that was minimum wage or simply work/study pay according to college standards. It was good money as far as I was concerned. As you can see, there was simply no time to go out for a romantic date on February 14th, so we postponed our celebration until the next day.

Thirty-five years later, we still are.

In fact, a couple of years after that first Valentine's weekend, we became engaged on February 15th.

2 Other Creative Souls are Saying:

Joanne said...

Love the pic - cute couple and now 35 years later - still cute and having fun. I loved making Valentines as a kid with the lace doily stuff. It's the little stuff that perks up Feb. 14th.

JoJo said...

Like you, my Valentines memories are of being in elementary school making decorations, exchanging those little cards, someone's mom bringing in pink cupcakes or cookies topped w/ red sugar.

In college in 1985, I got engaged on Valentines Day, but we broke up the following year.

Nowadays, we don't really observe the holiday at all. We used to exchange cards & gifts, but we phased that out a few years ago. My b-day is at the end of Nov., then there's Christmas, then Brian's b-day is on 2/10, so we agreed that since we go overboard from Nov-Feb, we would put V-Day and our anniversary celebrations to rest. We've been married over 20 yrs. It means more to me that he gets me a Blizzard from DQ from time to time, or a little present if he's at the store than a V-Day card. And cards are expensive!!

Word verif: untie