Children's Unconditional Love is the Best Present We Ever Get
/Children's cards are the best. The ones made of construction paper and glue, signed in crayon by a child's small hand. TO THE BEST MOTHER IN THE HOLE WIDE WORLD. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY.
Hallmark can't compete.
I saved these cards, signed "Love, Your son, Robert." And "Love, Lauren," with a small heart drawn under her name. And "Love, Julie," followed by lines of XOXOXOXOXOXOXO until the paper ran out.
All the time, people complain about how hard life is and how disappointing and how nothing ever turns out right. All you have to do is pick up a newspaper or listen to the radio to be convinced that the world is a hopeless, miserable place. The fact is, life is hard and often disappointing and always unpredictable, and when something actually does turn out right, you can't help but ask yourself, for how long?
For how long does a child slip cards under a bedroom door, every card different, but every one the same? For how long is a child's love open and direct, and as confident and uncomplicated as a bumper sticker? For how long does love come calling in bright, bold capital letters in shades of red and green and yellow and blue? And why doesn't "Why me?" pop to mind then, the way it does when we find a parking ticket on our car window or an unexpected bill in the mail? Why me? How did I get so lucky? Why me? What did I ever do to deserve such love?
It seems that when we are batting .350 and it's a sunny spring day and the kids are being good and all's right in our own small worlds, "Why me?" never crosses our minds. We pose it only when life disappoints. It's automatic then. "Why me? What did I ever do to deserve this?" we say when our children have bad grades and worse attitudes and the world is throwing us curve balls and it's pouring on our parade.
"Why me?" belongs in the good times, too. The cards children make come straight from the heart and we take them as our due. We receive them and we smile. Then we put them away and forget what gifts they are.
My children made cards and picked bouquets of dandelions and covered jelly jars with seashells and created jewelry boxes of Popsicle sticks and pottery bowls that wobbled on the shelf. And I treasured every one.
But I had no idea that these were real treasures. They were just things that all children make and though I loved them, and made a big deal of them, I didn't see beyond them. I didn't see the love that drives a child to create these things for a mother or a father. Love so big that children sob if their Mother's Day card gets wrinkled, or if the heart they cut out and glued on the front rips. They don't cry for themselves. They cry because their gift is their love, and their love is perfect.
My son bought me a "diamond" ring at a church fair when he was four. It cost him all his change. He must have given up gum and licorice for it. His grandmother placed it in a velvet box and wrapped it in pretty paper and tied it with a bow. And he presented it to me on Christmas Day.
"It's big, isn't it?" he said when I opened it. As big as my love for you is what he meant.
I wore that ring for weeks. I should have worn it for years. "I'm saving it for best," I told him one day when he noticed it wasn't on my finger. "I don't want to lose it. It's too good to wear cleaning the house."
If I had stuck with one excuse, he might have believed me. But even at four, children know when they're getting the runaround.
The ring now lives in a box with a ring my mother gave me when I was 13, with a medal that was my grandmother's and with my high school class ring. "It's big, isn't it?" I can hear my son say when I look at it.
It sure is.
I thought it was the sweetest thing that he bought it. I thought he was the nicest little boy in the world. All kids do these things. They love and they show it. And love is the best present we get.
