Standing in the line at the U.S. Post Office provides a little bit too much time viewing their tempting new lines of stamps.
Nonetheless there I stood a couple weeks ago perusing the newest offerings when I found it – the perfect Valentine’s day stamp – a red heart of ‘Love’ in front of a Hershey’s kiss. I didn’t need them. I didn’t have any plans on sending Valentine cards, but just because our family nickname is Hershey – just because I loved the look of the stamp, I bought a sheet, folded it in half and stuffed it in my pocket. I figured I could always use them to send in bill payments.
The next night three grandchildren came to spend the weekend. While they slept, I remembered that last year I had found this great bargain of six boxes of children’s Valentines for a dollar.
I tiptoed into the bedroom where the children slept, pulled the boxes off the closet shelf, slid out, tossed the cards on the coffee table, unsure what to do with them, but certain that three granddaughters would help me figure out something.
The first girl up and awake, quickly spied the cards, “What are these for?”
“You – if you want them.”
“I already have some.”
“What about to sending one to your cousin?”
Her face brightened . She opened a box of Disney princess cards to send to one of our 10 granddaughters. She also chose a couple fromthe sea creature cards for the two grandsons. Each box came with a set of heart shaped stickers for sealing the folded cards. She carefully wrote names and closed them up with heart stickers.
Before too long the youngest sister joined her. She opened the package of cute teddy bears cards.
I volunteered to address some standard sized envelopes. They each could put their school sized cards in the envelopes. I collected my address list, return address stickers and the sheet of Valentine stamps.
By the time the oldest sister had yawned her way into the living room we were sending cards to all the cousins as well as aunts, uncles and great-grandpa.
I had the envelopes addressed, stamped and stacked by families. She grabbed the stacks of envelopes and selected a card for the first person, scribbled out her name, secured it with a heart sticker and slid it in the envelope. She started last, but finished long before her younger sisters.
Six sheets of partly used heart shaped stickers remained.
“Do you want to decorate the envelopes with these?” I asked, gathering them up and figuring out how many we still had. “You could put five or six stickers on each envelope. And you each can decorate eight envelopes,” I said.
They began choosing which envelopes they personally wanted to decorate.
And then the protests began. Each wanted to decorate the envelopes going to their much older sister and their parents.
None of them wanted to let anyone else decorate those envelopes.
In the midst of the tears and wails of protests, I pulled the preferred envelopes from the heap and set them aside.
“Each of you do the ones in your stacks and then you can take turns putting two stickers on each of these envelopes,” I placed the small stack in front of me. The cries of protest dropped a couple notches – but only a couple notches. No one wanted to just put two stickers on those special envelope.
They didn’t want fair or to share … they wanted all or nothing.
Then silence descended and a silent bargaining began. “You can do Mommy’s.” Another sighed, “I’ll do daddy’s.” They each picked up their select envelope.
Busy silence reigned as they created arrangements of heart shaped stickers.
It was a good – if not a perfect morning – of addressing Valentines. But I’m not complaining – I’ll take what I can get – especially when it means I get to use the perfect Valentine stamps.