As Valentine’s Day approached last year, Dad decided to bring back a tradition he and Mom started long ago:

Mail giant chocolate hearts from Hawaii to loved ones back home.

Their annual trips to The Big Island began when youngest son Bill was stationed there.

My brother, the Marine:

Mom and Dad liked their winter visits to Hawaii (with its depression-lifting sunshine) so much, they made it a habit. Even after Bill had long since returned to civilian life in New York, they booked a month in paradise each February.

One year, they sent each of their four adult children a beautiful Hawaiian lei for Valentines Day, the fresh flowers still fragrant. It made for quite an unusual show-and-tell presentation at school.

Other years, we received macadamia nuts, coffee, fresh pineapples. But the year they sent us each a big chocolate heart was the absolute best. Once Mom and Dad did that, they never went back to nuts and flowers. Chocolate ruled the day.

A love of chocolate has passed to another generation.

Here’s my brother David’s older grandson, Leo, nearly three, rejoicing in the gift last year (turn your volume up for full enjoyment):

That’s Leo’s mom, Becky, prompting him to say thank you (he needed no guidance in digging in, smart lad).

The oldest great-grandchild is Cameron, our John’s son.

When telling me about the plan for sending chocolate hearts, Dad passed along family lore that I’d not heard before.

Apparently one Valentine’s Day, back in the 1990s, the annual chocolate-heart package was mistakenly addressed to grandson Andy rather than his dad, my brother Harry. (Dad thinks Andy was seven or eight at the time). It was the best present ever for a second grader.

After opening his package from Hawaii, young Andy was kind enough to share his treat with Harry and Linda. He made it clear, though, that it was his chocolate. In fact, when he left the house for any amount of time, he hid the partially eaten treasure in his absence.

He hid it well. Harry never discovered the hiding place.

Bravo, Andy! Dad sent him a heart to commemorate the sweet memory, as he totally understands the power chocolate holds over otherwise rational beings.

The story about Andy and the Chocolate Heart reminded me of one of Dad’s childhood stories:

When he was 14, Dad was already gainfully employed. He earned 40 cents an hour at Sullivan’s Drug Store in New Haven.

“I was at a nasty age, but got over it quickly once I started dating Mom.”

Just before he entered the dating world, Dad had sampled a piece of pineapple pie. He wanted more. It was just so good. So he dropped by Mohican Market on State Street and bought himself an entire pie with some of the earnings from his after-school job.

Now, if he’d walked in the front door of his home with a whole pie, he’d need to do the right thing. There were three sisters, one brother, and two parents to share it with for dessert.

Dad devised a plan.

His bedroom was on the second floor. And he had a radio with a long copper antenna that hung out the window.

It was a really long antenna. Long enough to almost reach the ground on the outside of the house. Long enough to tie to the twine on the bakery box.

And so, standing outside, Dad tied the copper antenna to the twine on his pie box. He slipped unnoticed through the back door and upstairs to his bedroom. He reached out of the window and slowly, slowly pulled the pineapple pie up and into his room.

“Dad! Did you get caught?”

“Oh yeah. But it probably took a day for my mom to smell the scent of pineapple in my room.”

By then, only the crumbs were left.

Happily, Dad eventually learned to share. (No doubt Mom was a good teacher. And a good example.) But he never lost his sweet tooth. In the 1960s and ’70s, Dad detoured to the bakery on the way home from church most Sundays, much to our delight.

Update: Originally this was posted in March of 2020, but today we update the story as Dad enjoys another Pineapple Pie:

In case this takes your taste buds into overdrive, the pie came from one of Goldbelly’s many online food offerings, and is called Pineapple Right Side Up Pie. (Here, I’ll even share a discount code with you.)

I can see a smile on Mom’s face as she peeks down from heaven. Her beloved, after all these years, is sharing his Pineapple Pie.

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