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When Levi Carpenter proposed to Letitia (Letty) McCluskey on New Year's Eve 1909, he said, "Pick a day [for our wedding], and make it one I can always remember."

She chose February 14.

That year, 1910, a foot of snow fell in Fayetteville, Tennessee, on Valentine's Day. Letty said, "Let's put it off a week, to make sure all the guests can arrive." Levi wouldn't hear of it. He was convinced the day was right, snow or no snow. The wedding was hastily moved from the church to the minister's parlor, with five people present.

Because the roads were impassable, all arrangements for flowers, refreshments, and formal wear had been scrapped. Yet, as if by magic, Levi arrived with a bouquet of pink roses for his bride. When prodded, he said he "had connections." Forty-some years later, he confided to me (his great-grandson) that the minister's wife brought them from her greenhouse.

By the time I came into the world, Levi and his Valentine wife were well past sixty. Living only a few miles away, I saw them almost every weekend. After Valentine's Day, without fail, I knew a huge bouquet of pink roses would be on the mahogany table in the foyer. But that wasn't all.

Somewhere near the vase was Levi's one annual attempt at artistry: a large snowflake intricately cut from paper. Attached to it was a note: "To Letty, my Valentine lady these 44 years." The words never changed from year to year, just the number. Yet true to nature, the snowflakes were always a different design.

At age nine, I discovered a nook in the china cabinet where every anniversary snowflake had been placed, lovingly and neatly, starting with the first one inscribed, "To Letty, my Valentine for a whole year." Levi, a carpenter who was considered "tight-lipped" and unemotional, showed his heart to everyone once each year.

A master at his art
One day Levi sat me down and patiently showed me, step-by-step, how to fold and cut paper snowflakes. But it didn't take long before I became more frustrated than artistic. My efforts resulted in things that looked more like rat's nests than snowflakes. It made me wonder: Does Great-granddad really want me to know the secret?

He seemed to delight in being the only one in the family with an artistic gift. He knew his wealthy brother Claude had taken his wife on a Valentine jaunt to the Caribbean, giving her a pearl necklace on the way. But Claude could only buy gifts. Levi could make snowflakes. And every one was a reminder of his wedding day, and of the girl he married.

No one ever said to me on February 14, "This is a big day for your great-grandparents." But I knew it was. The only time I recall them kissing was on a Valentine's Day, when my parents and I just happened to arrive at the moment Levi gave Letty her annual snowflake and roses.

When she realized we were watching, Letty's cheeks flushed as she scurried from the room, shrieking, "Levi, you wicked thing!" She wasn't convincing at all.

A few years afterward Levi gave Letty a snowflake on which he had written, "To Letty, my Valentine lady these 56 years." No one was sure if Letty saw this one. She was alive, and conscious, but so heavily medicated that she could only nod faintly when Levi held the snowflake in front of her. He placed it on her bedside table in the nursing home, beside the vase of pink roses.

He turned to Letty and said, "I'll be in tomorrow, early, Letty." Then after a pause, he added, "my love." She nodded faintly again.

Levi took my arm—a rare occurrence—as we left the room. A few feet down the corridor he said, "Boy, go get that snowflake. Them nurses or cleanin' women may throw it out with the garbage."

I retrieved it, knowing Levi intended to take it home to the china cabinet with the others. If Letty ever came home, he would show it to her then.

Paper cutout in the snow
The following Valentine's Day, Levi and I made our way to the cemetery, bringing a bouquet of pink roses. There was a light dusting of snow, and he brushed it away from the double headstone. He placed the roses in the headstone's vase, hesitated, then put them back in the glass vase he'd brought them in.

"This is foolish, boy," he said. "No point in leavin' these here where no one'll see them."

He let out a deep breath, then said, "She'll see 'em, anyway, wherever they are. We'll come back in April. I'm thinkin' of plantin' a rose bush here, if the church won't mind."

"Pink roses?" I asked.

"Sure, pink's a nice color. Here, go put these flowers back in the car."

I took the vase, trying not to look at his face, knowing that stifling a tear was even harder if he knew I was watching him. I sat in the car, the motor running, holding the vase of roses. Then I saw Levi take something from his coat pocket and tuck it down inside the stone vase. It appeared to be a piece of paper, though I couldn't be sure.

The snow had started to fall in earnest and Levi shuffled back to the car. "Gonna be a big snow this time, I think. Let's get going."

I knew that the one thing he wouldn't discuss was the one thing on his mind. How could the heavy snowfall not remind him of this day 57 years earlier? At 15, I hadn't yet experienced a broken heart, but sitting with my great-granddad, I was near enough to feel it.

A solitary snowflake
The following year I got my driver's license. It was my first time to drive to the family cemetery by myself. There was no snow this Valentine's Day, just a gray, dull chill.

The rose bush Levi and I planted in April had bloomed beautifully through the summer. It looked rather somber now, as did the entire cemetery. The date of Levi's death had been carved on his stone four months earlier.

My parents had placed some silk poinsettias on the grave at Christmas, and they were still there. Out of season now, I thought.

As I pulled them from the stone vase, something caught my eye. Barely visible in the pebbles at the bottom of the vase, I saw a corner of white paper. Somehow, after a year of snow and rain and wind, Levi's last paper snowflake was still intact.

I reached for it, thinking I would put it with my great-grandparents' other belongings in my parents' basement.

But the paper wasn't a souvenir for me. It was Levi's anniversary gift. It needed to stay exactly where it was.

Christian Reader original article.

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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