Dad always came through in his new role as a single father, and he didn't disappoint on this latest task. I arrived at the Brownie meeting with my Valentine's box in tow, feeling a wave of pure excitement. It was a sturdy cigar box he had found at work and wrapped nicely in striped birthday paper. To my eyes, it looked perfect. I truly believed it would be the winning box.

I stood in that circle of girls, holding my father’s version of a Valentine: straight edges, no ruffles, purely utilitarian. But as I looked around at the other boxes—overflowing with white lace doilies and red foil hearts—my excitement began to shift.

In a small town, a mother is a shield, and standing there, I realized mine was gone. My box was a child wrapped in a father’s practicality in a world that demanded a mother’s lace. I walked home that day with a new, heavy secret: I was different. I had learned to compensate for what was missing, but in that circle of girls, different still felt like "less than."