During my visit to my parents, I decided to explore their attic . They have lived in their home in the mountains since 1953, so investigating the attic was a trip down memory lane for me. I climbed the unstable ladder to the dusty, cold third floor. I looked around and noticed a very old basket in the corner, in which I found letters piled high, faded and dirty-untouched there. As I opened each letter, I discovered a new and previously unrevealed page of my parents' lives. My father served in the Army. He wrote about his daily experiences with civilians, German POWs, baths and more. I was drawn to these letters. Each of my mother's letters was sealed with her 1944 lipstick kiss. Daddy wrote that he sealed his return letters by rekissing her lipstick kiss. Oh, how they missed each other!  I finished reading six months of the letters and discovered there were at least eleven months missing. Where could they be?      Just six weeks after my visit, Daddy became very ill and was hospitalized. He was scheduled for kidney dialysis when I decided to fly to visit him. We discussed the letters. He told me how much receiving those lipstick-kissed letters had meant to him when he had been so far from home. As I left, the thought raced through my mind that tomorrow was Valentine's Day. But I quickly dismissed this thought. My father wasn't in any kind of shape to shop for a valentine. My parents had been married for fifty-six years. My mother would understand that her valentine would just have to be skipped this year. Later that evening, Mother and I revisited the attic in search of the lost letters. Toward the bottom, we discovered an unmarked gold cardboard box. Yes! Here were the long-lost letters! I began looking through them. Lying separate, on top of the letters was the valentine card my father had sent Mother in 1944! The next day,Mother and I visited Daddy in the hospital. I joked with him, saying softly, "Today is Valentine's Day, and I know you have been a little busy lately, but I've got something you covered."I handed him the card. He carefully opened the card, and when he recognized it, his eyes filled with tears. There was nothing lacking that Valentine's Day after all. My father, in a voice shaking with emotion, read the loving message he'd sent to my mother fifty-six years earlier. And this time, he could read it to her in person. The letters in this passage are the symbol of   _  .
love faith kiss promise