Originally broadcast on CHED radio - Friday, February 14, 1964

If you are a parent, you have gone through this experience. It usually occurs with the first child, and happens mostly at Christmas, Easter, or Valentine's Day. Your first grader comes home and hands you a piece of paper. It can be almost any shape, except square. It has lots of color, but never two which go to together. It has green, a vivid blue with touches of bright orange and brilliant red. And inside it has the lettering. If it was scribbled by anyone else's child, you couldn't read it, but you take a flyer and think it must say "to mommy" from Sydney, and every letter is a different size and the ’S’ and the ‘E’ are facing the wrong direction. Two of the words have a gray – black background because they have been erased six times in an effort to get them correct which they never are. But this is what Sydney has made for you and he brings it home in his grubby little hand and you look at it and you say "why Sydney, that's beautiful." Then comes the worst moment in a parents life. Sydney says… “do you know what it is?" And you get all red and say "Certainly, and it's just lovely," but he won't let you off the hook and he says again,,, "What is it?" And you pray for the phone to ring right then, but it never does. Then it's back-and-forth, forth-and-back, ‘till you find out what it is he has drawn, and it’s never why do you think it might be. It's always something like a red concrete overpass with a purple truck going over it through a meadow of black grass. But this is his valentine card for you, and you love it. And, of course, we always save it for Daddy, and when Daddy comes home, Mother always says… "show your valentine to Daddy, Sydney," and then Mommy sits back and watches as daddy sweats it out through the "it's beautiful" and "do you know what it is?" And Mommy never lets Daddy off the hook by telling him in advance that the purple glob with the orange and red is an overpass and not a heart at all. However, when the bad moments are all over and the kids are tucked into bed, when you settle down in your easy chair and see that messy little valentine, you get a little sentimental and you say… "you know, honey, I think Sydney has talent. That's a pretty good drawing he did there… yes, sir!… Real good," and you tuck it away in your bottom drawer with all the other memory things a man accumulates as he grows older and his little ones grow away from the protection of his fire side.