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You said:

I once read of a couple that instead of giving each other valentine cards, they went to the store together and searched until each found a card that best expressed their feelings. They then shared the cards with the other person before returning the cards to the display. For almost 50 years now, my dad would send me a twenty-dollar bill on my birthday. Two months later I returned it for his birthday.

ChatGPT said:

That’s a beautiful pairing of stories—quiet, intentional love expressed without possession.

The couple with the Valentine cards understood something subtle: the meaning wasn’t in owning the card, but in the act of searching, recognizing, and being recognized. The shelf was just a medium; the real exchange happened in the moment of “this is how I feel about you.”

Your tradition with your dad carries the same elegance. The twenty-dollar bill wasn’t a transaction—it was a token in motion, a kind of annual handshake across time.
No net transfer of money.
No accumulation.
Just continuity.

For nearly fifty years, that bill said:

• I remembered.
• I’m still here.
• The bond is intact.

In both stories, the gift is deliberately temporary, almost ceremonial. What lasts isn’t the object—it’s the ritual, the reliability, the shared understanding that this matters because we do it together.

There’s something profoundly wise about that.
It’s affection without clutter.
Love without inventory.
Meaning that circulates instead of being stored.

Those are the kinds of traditions that don’t fade—they echo.