The Best Gifts of All

So…Mother’s Day is coming up quickly.

This realization hit me like a ton of bricks the other day – the fact that, with relations between my ex and I being what they are, he likely isn’t going to initiate any kind of gift giving from the girls to me. So I decided that, rather than feel sorry for myself, I would turn my focus to what I could do for others. I made plans to make home made gifts (home made bath salts in pretty decorated jars and hand made cards from the girls) for both my mother, and my ex’s mom (the girls’ “Nana”).

Yesterday, before the girls and I took the bus to the mall to go shoe shopping, I told the girls of my plans to do something nice for their grandmothers for Mother’s Day. E, my oldest, looked at me said, “Mommy, I want to buy YOU a Mother’s Day present. But I don’t have any money, so you’ll have to pay for it”.

Tears welled up in my eyes. “Sure, honey, we can do that if you’d like. Where would you like to go shopping?”

“At the jewelery store.” She said dreamily, with a far off twinkle in her eye.

Dollar signs flashed before my poor single-mama-without-a-job eyes. “Well, I think we’ll find a place that we can go.”

Once shoes were successfully purchased, I steered the girls to the nearest “junk jewelry” store. I “hid” inside the store while they looked over the jewelry.

E tracked me down. “I’m going to need some help with this, Mommy.” Her voice was confident and decisive. “We need to find a salesperson.”

We tracked down a salesperson and E did all the talking. “We need to pick out our Mommy a present and I need a little help.”

The saleswoman and I exchanged smirky glances and she bustled over to help the girls while I waited just out of sight and out of earshot, swallowing back the tears, feeling overwhelmed with love and pride for my daughters. The saleswoman “smuggled” the item to the cash, where I paid, and then she tucked it into my oldest daughter’s pocket.

As I sit here writing this, my two precious daughters are holed up in the bedroom wrapping my gift.

Rather than feeling sorry for myself that life didn’t necessarily work out the way I wanted or anticipated, I will be spending Mother’s Day with my two beautiful daughters, drinking in every precious moment. I’m sure I’ll be choking back some tears from time to time throughout the day…but they will be tears of gratitude and joy for the two most precious gifts that the Universe has ever provided me with.

Thank you.