The Gift

“When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth.”    ― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

As the minute hand inched its way to 2:00, third grade students perched at the edges of their seats.  They stretched tall and peered around the table stacked high with handmade gifts in lavender tissue paper, eager to spot the guests of honor.

Great care and attention to all the details went into transforming the library into a beautiful venue for this special day, similar to preparing a nursery for a new baby! What these special guests will soon learn is that the children have been preparing for this special day since the first month of school.  Nine months of careful preparation and love have been poured into poetry, songs, stories, and art work now carefully hiding under the tissue paper in beautiful handmade scrapbooks for one special person.

“Mom is here!” one child excitedly exclaimed and they began to wave.

Young faces erupted into beautiful smiles as amazing women entered the room and greeted their young children with tender loving hugs.  That moment, when these children saw their mothers, great love and joy radiated from the child to his/her mother.  Tears welled up in my eyes, witnessing such a beautiful scene.  Joy and love, present and palpable, filled the room!

The mother-child bond is a powerful force.  I experienced this first hand the day I became a mother.  The sheer joy of holding my tiny infant in my arms after nine months of anticipation created an avalanche of emotions and stirred a love within me more powerful than anything I have ever encountered.  I would lay down my very life for this tiny baby.  Great love and joy radiated from me to my new baby.  And now I had the most important job of my life, being a mom.  Seeing the great love and joy reciprocated from the children to their mothers was something to behold.

Proudly, the children moved to the front of the room and shared a Mother's Day poem reciting it together.  Then one by one they shared a Mother's Day piece, many of which they authored.  As they read, each child met their mother's gaze and were drawn to their mother like an invisible tractor beam connecting them across the room.

After the cake and punch was served, each child picked up the lavender, tissue wrapped gift and handed it to their mother with eagerness.  The nine months of lovingly creating this gift was now in the hands of the one they love so very much!

What followed was beautiful.  Moms unwrapped the one of a kind scrapbooks and then arm in arm, the pair read, laughed, smiled, snuggled and shared.   Visions of this amazing connectedness, joy and love filled my head as I drove home. These children are such gifts to their mothers.

As the minute hand inched its way to 4:30, another child waited eagerly for his mother to arrive.

As, I opened the door to my house, my youngest son greeted me at the door with smile erupting on his freckled face. We sat down for dinner and he popped up and stood next to me with a smile stretching from ear to ear.  From behind his back he handed me a special package decorated in a toilet paper roll, his brown eyes shining with anticipation.  The special gift he had been lovingly creating was somewhere in this usual wrapping. I unwrapped the special gift and found three homemade bath salts glistening in the tube.  He closely watched me and beamed as I admired his masterpiece and marveled at the lovely lavender scent.  Hugging him close, he whispered in my ear, “I love you mom, you’re the best mom ever!”  I held him a little closer and a little longer, wanting this magical moment to last forever.