Friday, August 23, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Why simple gestures are so meaningful
It was my daughter, Aubrey's, birthday yesterday. The good news was that it happened to fall on the one weekday each week that I do not work, and spend with my girls who are not yet in school, so we could spend the day together doing something. The bad news was that my husband was out of town the day before and day of her birthday -- which meant that I could not follow our family's tradition of buying balloons the night before that she could wake up to in the morning.
The morning of her birthday I woke up before her... and felt so bad, again, that I could not run out and get balloons (can't leave the house on my own to go pick them up, and there's not much surprise in taking all 3 kids along with me to buy them). So then I came up with an alternative. I simply made her a large "card" on some poster board I had lying around. I blew up some regular balloons and taped them on. Then I stood the card up where she's see it when she woke up.
It was simple and achieved what I really intended - for Aubrey to know she was cherished, and on her birthday to feel like it was a special day.
It really reminded me of how you don't have to take the most complicated and complex path to show your loved ones what they mean to you -- doing something with the resources you have right in front of you is just as meaningful, especially when the alternative is doing nothing at all.
The morning of her birthday I woke up before her... and felt so bad, again, that I could not run out and get balloons (can't leave the house on my own to go pick them up, and there's not much surprise in taking all 3 kids along with me to buy them). So then I came up with an alternative. I simply made her a large "card" on some poster board I had lying around. I blew up some regular balloons and taped them on. Then I stood the card up where she's see it when she woke up.
It was simple and achieved what I really intended - for Aubrey to know she was cherished, and on her birthday to feel like it was a special day.
It really reminded me of how you don't have to take the most complicated and complex path to show your loved ones what they mean to you -- doing something with the resources you have right in front of you is just as meaningful, especially when the alternative is doing nothing at all.
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