From Daniel With Love

Madeleine made several valentines the other day - no doubt at school - all of equal size, pink, cut out along a particular pattern, and she distributed them to several family members.  When she saw that I was writing down, on the back of the one she gave me, everything she had to say about it, she started dictating the language for the others.   One reads, "For the whole family in my life.  Very special.  From Madeleine.  I love you."

As I was taking these valentine-dictations from Madeleine, Daniel asked me for my pen.  I had him wait until Madeleine was done with her directives, and then I gave him the pen, and just assumed he was off to work on some art project.

But what he came back with, within a matter of a few minutes, was much better.  It was his own valentine - not cut out, but a heart within another heart on an 8-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of paper, turned on its side in "landscape" rather than "portrait" orientation.  The inside of the heat reads, "I love you Ian."  Next to the heart is the text:

To Ian
From Daniel and
daddy and MADELINE
and Amy

The spelling and capitalization is exactly as outlined above.

Daniel isn't exactly high-profile in his expressions of love, but this is a good illustration of how his affection appears, powerfully, even dramatically, and very spontaneously.  Ian's love for Daniel is very moving when it makes itself visible; my favorite illustration of it was when, on Daniel's first birthday, when Ian was three, when Ian found out, first thing in the morning, that it was Daniel's birthday, he beamed with pleasure and started quietly applauding - I think probably rocking a bit, with excitement.  But this latest affection-gram from Daniel is quite unique, accentuated in its artistic and calligraphic precision.  Daniel, as I always point out, is a wonderful artist (better than me, I really believe), and you can tell he poured his talent and love into this work, rising to the occasion of the message itself.

(February 5, 2013)