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September 11, 2017

Excerpt for Valentine's Day....

THE HEART-SHAPED Schrafft’s or Whitman’s Sampler boxes were usually red with gold lettering or with a big, red, satin bow across the center. Once there was a gold couple dancing on the lid like golden shadows and another time the hearts were dark burgundy with red flowers and lace around the edges.

When my Father was home, not in the hospital or too dazed to do anything, he would ceremoniously give us chocolate Val- entine boxes, the large one with 25 chocolates separated in their fan papers for Mother and the matching small Valentine box, with only eight or ten chocolates, for me. It meant to me that my Father loved me as well as Mother, but safely, proportionately. We would spend hours at the kitchen table, with Mother cutting the chocolates into three even sections and distributing them. We would taste them slowly, comment on their individual flavors. My favorite was the coconut in dark chocolate and I was usually offered whole the cherry swirling in clear sugary fluid inside choc- olate that would crack and slide slowly around my tongue and teeth until I chewed and licked it into oblivion. The memory of those chocolates tied me to my Father, demonstrated to me his generosity.

And today Kira, eight, and Chanti, five, sit with me at our fam-

ily room counter, ready to glue heart-shaped white paper doilies onto red hearts cut from heavyweight papers. They have carefully drawn half-hearts along the fold. Kira cuts hers out by herself but I help Chanti, a lefty, who has a rough time cutting, since good lefty scis- sors are hard to find. And small hands, holding markers in every rainbow color, draw I love yous, arrows, flowers, butterflies, moons, stars, suns and trees, individualizing each Valentine’s Day card.

I watch the depth of concentration. Chanti sucks on her bottom lip, Kira pushes her braids out of the way. Concentrate, concentrate. I love you Grandma. I love you Grandpa. I love you Gabrielle. I love you Marnie. I love you I love you I love you surrounds our pine table as the afternoon rides slowly on, a day with moments of simple, uninterruptable bliss.