Minnesota Prairie Roots

A preschooler's t-shirt message celebrates Valentine's Day.

VALENTINE’S DAY, for me, brings sweet, sweet memories of shoeboxes covered in white paper and decorated with pink and red hearts carefully cut from construction paper. Classmates slipped punch-out valentines through a slit in the box cover.

Attached to those “Be mine” messages, were heart-shaped suckers or a stick of Juicy Fruit gum or a pocket-sized box of conversation hearts that I thought tasted more of chalk than of candy

Many of those childhood valentines are tucked away now, somewhere in a cardboard box in an upstairs closet. Of all those greetings, I remember not the store-bought ones that sparkled with glitter, but rather the hand-cut plain white heart from Dallas.

“I love you like a little dove,” my neighbor boy, and classmate, wrote.

I can’t recall ever having a childhood crush on Dallas. It was Craig whom I “liked.” But, now, as an adult, I wonder if perhaps Dallas wasn’t trying to woo me with his heartfelt message.

Or maybe not. I mean, what exactly does it mean to “love you like a little dove?”

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A TRIO OF VALENTINES

Two-year-old Braxton, son of friends Billie Jo and Neal, is, indeed, a little "hunk of burnin' love."

Billie Jo and her kids, Nevaeh and Braxton, made these cookies for the February 13 game night at Trinity Lutheran Church, Faribault.

I discovered this Valentine's Day message in the preschool at my church, Trinity Lutheran.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY from Minnesota Prairie Roots!

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling