A Valentine’s Tradition

 

 

Just north of the intersection at Silverbell Road and St. Mary’s Road, an orange poster read “$3 and up- Valentine’s Sale.”  I looked around and saw a table set up on the sidewalk with pink, red and white blaring at me.  My curiosity led me to park and find out what the woman at the Valentine’s table was offering.

“It’s a fine chocolate,” Alma Romero said.  “I don’t like to put the cheap stuff out.”

The customer pondered, holding a few different bags of chocolate in her hands.

 “I don’t know if he likes chocolate,” the customer Cassandra Harris said. “Oh well, it’s the thought that counts.”  She was buying a gift for her daughter’s husband.

 As a woman who grew up in Nogales and moved to Tucson seven years ago to raise her daughter, Romero uses the profit from this Valentine’s table for her 7-year-old daughter’s birthday in March.  She buys all kinds of Valentine’s trinkets, mugs, teddy bears, and chocolate, then hand paints some of the trinkets, adds chocolate, arranges them with cellophane wrap, and voila!  They become beautiful gifts!

 Her cousin in Mexico, who owns a flower shop, was the one that prodded her to start a sort of yard sale or personal business like this.  She thought Valentine’s Day would be a good time of year when people are extra friendly.

She picked a good spot too!  She set up right across the street from Carondelet medical facilities and down the street from St. Mary’s Hospital and Pima Community College.  She says she gets to help out a lot of college students who need last minute gifts for their girlfriend or boyfriend.

The gifts range from little interactive pens for $1 to elaborate gift baskets for about $30.

Romero showed me a few of the gift baskets included with stuffed bears and decorated with candy and other trinkets. One bear, dressed like a flapper from the 50’s, sang “I want to be looooved by you, boo boo be doo.”  The song always gets stuck in her head, she told me. 

Many of the Valentine’s Day set-ups around Tucson come and go, but none last like this woman’s story of strength and support for her daughter since their move from Nogales… especially on this heart-warming holiday!

~ by nikki1488 on February 19, 2010.