Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Feb 15, 2007

Today’s Valentines Stories

~**~**~

MY FIRST LOVE LETTER

by Mariane Holbrook

Daddy carried the love note in his wallet for years.

It was written on the first graders’ paper of choice, that yellow tablet with wide

lines that kept the girls from writing uphill and the boys from writing down.

Around Valentine’s Day, first graders could write with fairly decent legibility and

acceptable spelling.  Even the boys in the room began to catch up so we

could read their uneven chicken scratches.

Dickie sat directly across the aisle from me in first grade.  He gave new

depth and definition to the word “shy” and was so bashful that

he always stared at the floor when someone said “hi” or asked him

a question. Not even the teacher could wrestle a response from him.

So, I was shocked down to my Mary Jane’s one day when Dickie suddenly

passed me a note, written on standard yellow paper with pencil and folded precisely

several times into one very small square.

Immediately, Dickie turned his head to face the windows, his face and neck both

red-splotched from acute embarrassment and apprehension.

I quickly opened the note under my desk to prevent the prying eyes of little

Shirley who was straining to read it from her seat behind me.

Written in neat, bold, block letters were these words:

DEAR MARIANE. DO YOU LOVE ME?  I LOVE YOU.

LOVE, DICKIE

I swung my head sideways to look at Dickie who was rigid with anxiety and fear.  He

stared straight ahead but his eyes could see me peripherally from the right corner of

his eye sockets where they had been quickly positioned.

Grabbing my pencil, I turned the note over and wrote in heavy, even bolder block letters:

DEAR DICKIE.  YOU ARE A BRAT AND I HATE YOU.

LOVE, MARIANE

Broken-hearted, Dickie folded the note and placed it carefully in his shirt pocket.

Finally, the dismissal bell rang and Dickie ran for the door.  On the way home, he passed

my sister, who was returning home from high school.

“Dickie,” she asked gently, placing her arm around his thin shoulders, “What’s the matter?

Why are you crying?”

Dickie removed the note from his pocket and handed it wordlessly to my sister.

Struggling desperately hard to keep from laughing, she hugged him and asked if she

could keep the note.  He shrugged and, wiping the tears, ran on home.

My sister shared the note with Daddy, who begged to keep it.  He showed it to nearly

everyone he saw for months and kept it in his wallet for many years until it fell apart

with age and usage.

Though attending the same schools, Dickie and I never had occasion to speak again.

After college, I married and moved to a southern state where I raised my family.

When I received an invitation from Dickie to attend our 50^th high school reunion in New

York state, I laughed out loud. Though both still happily married to our spouses,

Dickie and I have become almost-daily Email buddies and love to reminisce about our

hometown where he still resides.

For Valentine's Day this year, I sent him a hilarious E-card which read:

DEAR DICKIE, YOU ARE STILL A BRAT AND I HATE YOU.

LOVE, MARIANE

www.marianholbrook.com and welcomes your

Emails at Mariane777@bellsouth.net.

~**~**~

A New Kind of Valentines'

Carol Meeks


When the year is young, millions of dollars are spent on February 14. This
day is set aside to show and express how important the mate of your life is
to you. Roses and chocolates, sometimes champagne, finishes off a day of
token love. If you are really loved, you may get a diamond.

I have watched this celebration for seventeen years in an office where I
worked. It was pleasant to see flowers on each working girls' desk. Even the
men received flowers. I thought we were all blessed.

The love my husband and I share is a deep physical attraction for each
other. We've had forty years for our
feelings to deepen, and they have. I love him dearly and I know he loves me.
Our love is a mature love. We share.
We grow. We are contented at this stage of our life.

But since our retirement, the church we attend has studied Rick Warren's
FORTY DAYS OF PURPOSE. As knowledge unfolded in the pages of his text, I now
have a different concept of Valentine's Day and valentine love.

It is nice to give and to receive these gifts and remembrances of love, a
day set aside, just to experience our mate's feelings toward us. I am also
reminded and have come to know that John 3:16 NIV is a valentine to all of
us from our Savior and Lord. It says.

For God so loved
the world that
He gave His one and only
son that whoever
believes in Him shall not
perish
but have eternal
life.

How wonderful to realize that a certain day of the year does not have to be
set aside for us to celebrate and know the love of Jesus. Jesus loves us
unconditionally every day of the year. Our tokens of love from Him are:
forgiveness of sins, a fresh new start every morning, (Lamentations 3:22-23
KJV), and eternal life. I John 4:19
KJV, tells us, "We love Him because He first loved us."

This is cause for celebrations every day. Jeremiah 3:13 NIV, says, "I have
loved you with an everlasting love." He loves us this much three hundred
sixty five days of the year, not just February 14.

© 2005 Carol Dee Meeks
c_pmeeks@hotmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pkmeeks/

~**~**~

Poetry Corner

~**~**~

MY FIRST VALENTINE’S DAY WITHOUT YOU

by Mariane Holbrook

In all those years you were my friend, my lover and my wife,

You brought great joy and beauty to our home and to my life.

Each year I bought a valentine for you to show my love,

But this year you can read it from your home in heaven above.

If I could only find the words to say how much I care

And how each time I bow my head, I breathe your name in prayer.

I don’t know why God felt the time had come when we must part,

I may not understand His ways, but I can trust His heart.

And while my valentine this year won’t be the usual kind,

With fancy lace and lovers standing with their hearts entwined,

But it would say, “I love you dear, you’re everything to me,”

And it would soar across the skies for all the world to see.

Mariane Holbrook is a retired teacher, an author of two books,

a musician and artist. She lives with her husband on coastal

North Carolina.  She maintains a personal website

www.marianholbrook.com and welcomes your

Emails at Mariane777@bellsouth.net.

~**~**~

Two poems dedicated to my wife on Valentine’s Day

THEN AND NOW

By David Wainland

I didn’t know it then,

For I was only ten,

That love would always rule my life.

Across the class she sat,

her books upon her lap

That smile would always rule my life.

And when she moved away,

My broken heart would say,

That loss would always rule my life.

At seventeen I knew,

I would love more then a few,

That lust would always rule my life.

By twenty, I was lonely.

Never had that one and only,

That emptiness would always rule my life

Then at twenty-four I found,

The one I longed to be around,

That fidelity would always rule my life.

Now those forty years have gone,

And she is still the only one,

I find that love has always ruled my life.

David Wainland

david@davidwainland.com

~**~**~

There is a line in my face

By David Wainland

There is a line in my face

Where a person can trace

The years that I’ve had with my wife

There is a line in my face

And as I state my case

It’s been there through most of my life

There is a line in my face

That nothing can replace

And it’s weird when viewed from afar

There is a line in my face

As I gaze out in space

A line that is akin to a scar

There is a line in my face

Though not grown in haste

A line that has been there a while

There is a line in my face

And my heart keeps the pace

Because that line in my face is a smile

David Wainland

david@davidwainland.com