Valentine

When I was eight or nine, on Valentine’s Day Mom and Dad gave me this great big beautiful decorated chocolate heart, with my name on it.  It fit in a red box with white poke-a-dots.  It was the first chocolate heart I had ever seen.  It was so pretty.  Around the edge of the dark shinny chocolate was a light pink ruffle.  On the top were two red roses; underneath right across the heart was my name in white frosting.

Oh, I can never eat this.  I will save this forever!

I hated to eat it because it was so pretty.

It smelled so good.  Well I just had to tasted a little of it, so very carefully I nibbled at the back.  It tasted like waxy chocolate, sugar and cardboard.  But I thought it was heaven.

I worked my way around the back of the heart until there was only the front left.  This I really was going to save.  But, I wondered what the frosting was like.  Maybe just a little small piece off the bottom.  I tasted like pure hard sugar with the after taste of food coloring.  Well I had gone this far so guess I’ll have to eat the pink lace around the heart.  With that gone I only had the red roses left and my name so why not eat that!  With that, I was left with no heart no.  I might as well EAT the whole thing.

Well I was left with only the red and white poke-a-dot box.  With nothing else to do I decided to make something out of it.  There was this cut out in the shape of the heart.  It could be a stage if I put some curtains that I could pull to open.  Mom gave me some pieces of material, thread and needle.  It took a few tries, and a few poked fingers with the needle.  What a cute little stage I had now.  Now I needed puppets to have a show.  I took the valentines I had gotten and cutout people, animals and other things, and put strings on them.  I made up all kinds of stories into plays.  How much fun this was on a cool winter day.  Almost better than the chocolate heart.