American Greetings, the mammoth card maker, observes that a child’s first experience with greeting cards is on Valentine’s Day. Come to think of it, they’re right. Back in the day, public schools sent home class lists and children dutifully filled out cartoon character Valentines and signed them each “your friend.” The girls all dotted the i in friend with a puffy heart for all the classmates they liked most.

I remember Valentine’s Day in fourth grade. I made out my Valentine list from memory the night before. There were 25 kids in the class, but I could only remember 24 of them. When I walked in the hall Valentine’s morning to join the line going into the classroom, I passed the quiet boy with glasses. His name was Michael Hopper.

I stopped and studied him, trying hard not to play connect-the-dots with his freckles. “You’re the one I forgot,” I shouted. He didn’t understand, so like an idiot, I elaborated. “When I made out my Valentines, you’re the one I forgot!” I wish there was a way to pay penance for my ruthlessness. He sat there for a minute, and quietly said that he had forgotten me too. It didn’t matter.

One of the problems with Valentine’s Day is that for a holiday so bent on love as its theme, it sure does hurt a lot. Expectations can be a killer. All year long, it is good to give love away, but on Valentine’s Day, reciprocity is the name of the game.

Nancy Gibbs contends in Time magazine that we should ignore the day altogether, “True romance comes unscheduled…[snip] Over time, as it ripens into devotion, still it improvises, a favor rendered, a sudden kiss, a private joke, flowers for no reason. Its expression is the very opposite of the fretful, ‘preorder now, or be left with drug-store chocolates’ connivances that the day promotes. For those who feel well loved, every day, of course is Valentine’s. For the rest, no card can console.”

I’m not sure that I agree entirely with Gibbs but I see what she’s saying. Still, I like Valentine’s Day just because, well, because. Either way, one of the love lessons we’d do well to learn is that God loves us even when we’ve forgotten Him. Still, there is pain when the ones we love don’t always remember to love us with chocolates. Perhaps if we wanted to show real love too, we’d give them a break. We’d see that it is better to love in the daily smallness than to love with fanfare on a Hallmark holiday. Maybe love is an action and not a card, though I agree, cards with pink hearts are nice. We all just want to be remembered, however that looks, because it hurts to be forgotten.

Maybe I like Valentine’s Day because my favorite color is red. Maybe I like it because it’s nice to have a day that is different from the rest. And maybe I need the reminder to tell the folks I love that I really love them because sometimes I forget to do it.

When I went home that Valentine’s afternoon long ago and tore open my (undeserved) overflowing Valentine box, my nine-year-old self pulled out a special one, the last one. It was signed, “Your friend, Michael Hopper.”

He didn’t forget after all.