JOY ALONG THE WAY: LOVE EXPRESSED IN PERSONAL VALENTINES

I didn't participate in sending my valentines until I started to school. But I helped my sister Lou, three years ahead of me, make her many.

First we made sure that Mama or Grandma had ordered a wallpaper sample book from Sears Roebuck. These books were about the size of an ordinary 6 by 9, 150 page book, each page a sample of the wallpaper that one could order through the mail.

I don't ever remember Mama ordering wallpaper to put on the walls of our home. They were for us kids to make valentines. Oh, the beautiful pink roses, clumps of purple violets, birds flying across the page or canaries in cages! How we studied those pages, trying to rate the ones we considered the prettiest. Valentines made from them would be sent to our best friends.

The making of the valentines was simple. Mama would draw a perfect heart of cardboard for a template. A page from the sample book would be carefully removed, folded in half, the template laid on so that the violet clump, rose, etc., would be in the center and traced around with a pencil. That was what I got to do. Lou did the cutting for fear I'd forget about the two little spaces along the top that had to remain intact to insure the valentine would open where a message and signature could be written. There was one simple message we wrote no matter to whom they were to be sent: "I love you."

My first valentines were for Mama, Grandma Bell and Grandma Casey. The one to Grandma Casey had to be mailed because she lived far away in Fredericktown, Mo., 50 miles!

After I started to school I followed the custom of giving, via the big valentine box on the teacher's desk, a valentine to every one in the one-room school from grade one through grade eight. And, of course, one for the teacher. The interior message was always the same, "I love you."

After eighth grade graduation I entered into another stage of my valentine life. We "kids" were growing up. We spurned the homemade valentines. Our valentines must be "boughten" and the list shortened. They cost money. But, oh, so pretty. Some had a little step-like fold at the bottom that, when pulled down, made the valentine unfold into three or four stepped-up levels. The first step might be a fountain sending up little lacy sprays of water. The next step up could be a fancy dressed couple strolling through a flower garden. The third step up could be a colorful little cupid in a bower of roses, with bow and arrow aimed at the couple below. These were the heydays of valentines. Some even came in boxes. These cost a whole dollar.

When I graduated from high school and entered college, my list was further shortened, almost disappearing.

When granddaughter Lauren got to her early school stage, I came full circle, back to homemade valentines. Lauren and I saved little snippets of lace, embroidered ruffling, pretty buttons, beads and ribbons. We had a box of felt and satin scraps. And bird feathers! And that is where I am today.

My valentine to Lauren this year will be a folded piece of red felt cut out around a cardboard template large enough so that I can get a variety of things to put on the front. This time I have the ultimate in cutting out valentines, Clariss shears which, when cutting, leave little peaked scallops in the fabric. I'll choose from my continuing box of snippets some colorful lace to glue onto the edges. Where lace meets the peaked edges, I'll glue a string of tiny decorative pearls. On the front there will be a little white crocheted heart, glued on only partially, to form a pocket. I'll fill it with some strips of stamps because mail is the main way we keep in touch now while she is away at college. On some appropriate printed piece of calico, I'll cut the form of a rooster without tail feather, but with beak wide open as if he is sounding a wake-up call. Little music notes of gold-colored spray glitter will be coming from the opened beak. Real snippets of bird feathers, which she knows I still collect since our early walks in the park, will be glued on to form the tail feathers.

Inside, written with white pencil will be my simple message which is still, "I love you." The same message to all my readers.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.