It used to be that Valentines were something that filled a shoebox decorated with a pasted-on paper lace doily and construction paper hearts. Everyone in our grade school classroom was supposed to give a Valentine to each fellow classmate. It didn’t work out that way. The popular kids had boxes stuffed with the tiny white envelopes, sometimes with hand-drawn hearts and stickers on them. Other kids, like me, had a few rattling around the box. Flash forward many years and I’m finding Valentines in radishes, the leaves of a lilac bush and in rocks as I walk near the Salmon or Lemhi rivers here in Idaho. So no hard feelings, former classmates. No worries. My heart is full.

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