Cards for Everyone

Another Card Made by a Kid for his Mom

   I was having a play date with my friend, Molly, at her house. I was in first grade (pretty much all of these lessons I learned in first grade) and we were sitting in her kitchen making cards for our parents. I folded a yellow sheet of paper in half, hamburger-style, as I started making a card for my mom.  My heart wasn’t really going into the card, though. Molly had this huge tree in her backyard that I loved to climb. Climbing it made me feel like a big kid, so all I wanted to do while I was there was climb that tree. The way I saw it, the faster I finished my card, the faster I could climb Molly’s tree.

   I quickly cut out a big red heart and pasted it to the front of the card. I was almost done. I grabbed a purple marker, opened the card, and wrote, “I ♥ U”. I was done. Now I had a choice to make. I could either waste time making another card, or have one for only one of my parents. I chose the latter option. I just had to decide which one would receive my card.

   Deciding between parents was easy at the time. My dad was in the Navy, and always out at sea. I hardly got to see him. When my dad was home, he didn’t smile very much and was rather intimidating. I easily decided to give the card to my mom.

   When I got home, I delivered the card, and was rather proud of myself. My card was absolutely fabulous, despite my lack of interest in making it. I remember handing it to my mom, and she asked me if I made one for my dad, too. I replied no. A few days later she told me that by not making my dad a card as well, I had hurt his feelings. This struck me as odd, because up until this point I didn’t really consider that my dad had feelings. He always wore the same expression, and I had never seen him upset. That guilty feeling I previously mentioned slowly crept up again.

   To this day I still remember the day I left out my dad. Just the other day, I was telling him about this, and he just looked at me like I was crazy. According to him, he couldn’t remember anything of the sort happening; I still can remember. I still feel bad about that card incident. However, that incident so very long ago taught me an important lesson. It’s important to include everyone, even if it is harder to do so.