It doesn't matter how you say 'I love you' -- as long as you say it

"Nothing says 'I love you' like beef."

At least, that's what the Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co. was trying to convince me of with its pre-Valentine's Day circulars, starting the week of Jan. 21. First came the elegant black and white photo of a woman wearing what appeared to be a mini-T-bone as her necklace pendant. The week before Feb. 14, above a picture of a dozen red roses on sale for $19.99, was this tag line: "This Valentine's Day, say it with Beef."

Um, no.

Granted, this was all part of the company's effort to invite customers to purchase Certified Angus Beef and simultaneously enter a drawing for a $5,000 diamond necklace for that special someone. And while I salute those who wanted, as the Pig's press release suggested, "to make a bold statement with the gift of beef," I was hoping my fiance would ignore the bumfuzzling grocery store ads and give me something more romantic -- and, if possible, less artery-clogging -- for Valentine's Day.

But finding the right gift isn't easy, as I discovered in my quest to pick out something thoughtful for my loved one. That got me thinking: How do you say it best?

I turned to Doris Hammond, a Sun City Hilton Head resident, for a little inspiration. Married 52 years to her beloved Ted, Hammond, 75, still blushes when she speaks of meeting her husband the summer before her senior year in high school. Back then, he wore a beret. As a teen, he played the bass fiddle in a band.

The Hammonds dated for four years before marrying on May 30, 1953.

That's an awful lot of Valentine's Days to come up with original gift ideas, said Hammond, who teaches several courses for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB, including one on sexuality and aging. "You run out of unique things to give," she said. "Or you run out of money."

Still, Hammond has a favorite Valentine's Day present. In the mid-1950s, she said, Ted was a radio operator in the Air Force, stationed on a small island off the coast of Japan. And because dependents weren't allowed where he was stationed, Hammond stayed with her mother and grandmother in Cincinnati for the year or so that Ted served on the island.

It was an era long before e-mail, an age when writing letters was the common form of communication. Because of Ted's location, two-way phone calls were impossible.

"I never expected to be able to talk to him," Hammond said.

But that year, somehow, Ted finagled a way to have his voice transmitted overseas to Hammond's house in Ohio on Feb. 14.She picked up the phone and heard Ted's voice saying, "I love you."

Her husband couldn't hear Hammond's response. But she still remembers.

"I just broke down and cried. I never expected that -- to hear his actual voice, right on Valentine's Day," she said.

Turns out, nothing says "I love you" like actually saying "I love you."

In the years that followed, the couple exchanged valentines, though none were a "huge commercial treat," Hammond said. Once, she arranged for a barbershop quartet to serenade Ted. It was a fitting gift, she thought -- both loved to sing in the car, singing the same songs her parents sang in front of them while chaperoning the high school sweethearts. And both Ted and Hammond eventually joined barbershop music choruses.

Last Thursday, she was part of a quartet that delivered singing valentines in barbershop harmony around the Lowcountry. Singing barbershop is one of the ways Hammond likes to remember her Ted. At his funeral -- or rather, his "Celebration of Life," as Hammond calls it -- a Sweet Adeline chorus sang "What a Wonderful World."

Two and a half years ago, he died. In her arms, Hammond said. At their Sun City home.

Recalling it all on the porch of their house, she broke down and cried, just a little.

When he died, Hammond said she heard a click. And then, chords of music.

Perhaps nothing says "I love you" like what cannot be put into words at all.