Valentine’s Day was the time my father chose to show his love for the special people in his life. Over the years I fondly (天真地) thought    21     him as my “Valentine man”.

My first memory of the    22      he could bring to Valentine’s Day came when I was six. That morning at the breakfast table I found a card and a gift-wrapped package at my chair. The card was    23   “Love, Dad” and the gift was a ring with a small piece of red glass to    24    my birthstone, a ruby (红宝石). There is     25     difference between red glass and rubies to a child of six, and I remember    26   that ring with pride that all the cards in the world     27     not surpass (超越).

  28   I grew older, the gifts gave    29   to heart-shaped boxes filled with my    30    chocolate and always included a     31    card signed “Love, Dad”. In those years my “thank-you” became   32    of a perfunctory (敷衍) response. The cards seemed less    33    , and I took for granted that the Valentine would     34    be there. I had    35     my hopes and dreams in receiving cards and gifts from “significant others” and “Love Dad” just didn’t seem quite    36    .

His final card remains on my desk today. It’s a     37    of how special fathers can be and how important it has been to me to know that I had a father who continued a  tradition of    38     with simple acts of understanding of the people in his life.

Those things never    39     , nor does the memory of a man who never     40    being my Valentine man.