Love in a Candy Box...

I have posted this many times before. I think it is appropriate to post this month as it is the anniversary of my father's passing, may he rest in peace, and especially on St. Valentine's Day as it is a day of love and chocolates.
  My father was a romantic.

He loved my mother  and he loved her mother, who lived with us most of my life, very much also. He showed such a great deal of respect for her and for his own parents and as my maternal Grandmother said.."He is as goo to me as 20 sons".

My father was head chemist and vice president of a chemical company here in New Jersey who, for many reasons, later opened a soda fountain/ice cream shop that eventually became a  stationary store in a tiny town, selling stationary to big business and selling cards and school supplies from the main store.

He took a beating money wise later on from malls and the big stationary chain stores. What a shame!

But he was honest to a fault and ever the romantic who learned constantly.  You never saw him without a scholarly work in his hands.

He would bring home boxes of candy to my mother and grandmother sometimes after work as a treat, one I would share in. And, since the store sold fancy Valentine boxes of candy, he brought those home as well.

Once, I remember him walking home on a bitterly cold day without his brand new coat because he had given it to a poor man in town whose coat was in very bad shape.
"Its only a block walk. It's not that cold out" he said standing there in his shirt sleeves.
A candy box was  tucked under his arm for Mother that night .
He sat down to dinner as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
For him this was not out of the ordinary at all.
He wore his old one from then on. It was just as good he said.

Upstairs, in my grandmothers bedroom, inside the closet on a shelf, were  old candy boxes my father had brought home over the years.  They were filled with her crochet work (she made fillet crochet that was so beautiful ), news clippings of her friends deaths, births of grandchildren, marriages,  cards from holidays, mementos and tiny souvenirs of times past. One was used to house her "good gloves" and "my good scarves".

I once asked her why she saved all those boxes.

"Oh, " she said, "its a shame to waste things".

"Yes", I said, "but you could fit this all in one or two hat boxes".

She looked at me with those pastel gray eyes , now half blind and said , "But there is so much love in these boxes".