As the story goes, one day a long time ago, a young mother walked
into her 5-year old daughter’s bedroom and was extremely upset to see
that the little girl had used almost a whole roll of expensive gold
wrapping paper to decorate a small package about the size of a shoe box.
While severely scolding her daughter, the mother quickly gathered the
remaining paper, scotch tape and scissors. The child was told to get her
pajamas on and go to bed immediately without watching TV or getting her
usual bedtime snack.
The family had very little money, and the mother had been planning
on using that paper for a special gift that was to be given to a close
friend the following week.
Early
the next morning, the little girl hopped up onto her mother’s bed and
handed her the gift box, wrapped in the gold paper. “This is for you,
Mommy. Happy Birthday.”
The mother was embarrassed by her over-reaction the night before, but her
anger flared again when she opened the box and found it was empty.
She spoke to her daughter in a harsh manner, "Don't you know
young lady, when you give someone a present there's supposed to be
something inside the package?"
The little girl had tears in her eyes and said, "Oh,
Momma, it's not empty! I blew kisses into it until it was
full."
The mother was crushed. She put her arms around her
little girl and the two of them lay on the pillow embracing as the mother
begged her daughter’s forgiveness for her thoughtless anger.
From that day on, the mother kept the gold box by her bed. Every
time the daughter did something that made her mother feel special or
proud, or every time they shared a precious moment together, the mother
would take a little piece of paper, or napkin, or anything else that could
be written on, and make a brief note about the occasion. She would then
place the little note inside the box.
Every year after that, as the two of them grew older, they would
get together on the mother’s birthday, take out the box and remove the
pieces of paper one by one, recalling each of those special moments. As
the years went by, they would spend hours at a time on the mother’s
birthday, laughing, crying, hugging and kissing, as they relived the
special times they spent together and those special moments that the
daughter, sometimes unknowingly, had so dearly affected her mother.
Years later, when her mother died, the daughter opened the box, and
on the very top of all of the pieces of paper lay a beautiful piece of
gold paper with the words, “Thank you for a lifetime of kisses. Whenever
I had a bad day, I would reach into the box when it was time for bed and
pull out a “birthday kiss” to read. That “kiss” always made me
feel so wonderfully grateful for being your mom that I would forget about
my bad day and go to sleep with my spirits lifted and enjoy dreams of our
joyous moments together. The day you gave me this box of “birthday
kisses” was the most wonderful day of my life. ”
In
a very real sense, each of us, as human beings, have been given a Golden box
filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, family & friends.
The box is constantly being filled with “kisses” – moments when we
feel special and so glad to be alive. There is no more precious possession
anyone could hold. It's a shame we don't always stop and think about our
Golden box when we are experiencing our most lonely and sad feelings.
The daughter in the story took her mother’s gold box home and
placed it in a place of honour in her home. She also made another box,
wrapped it in gold paper, and placed it beside her bed. For the rest of
her life, whenever a child, family member, or friend, did something, or
said something that made her feel special, she would write it down on any
piece of scrap paper she could find and place it in her gold box. Every
year after that, on her own birthday, the daughter would sit for hours,
removing the pieces of paper one-by-one, recalling those special moments
and feeling so happy to be alive. She would then write a letter to each
different person who had “touched her” in the past year, and in the
letter recall how she felt and how thankful she was for the “birthday
kiss” that she had received from that person.
What a wonderful world it would be if each of us would open up our
own golden box of birthday kisses more often.
Have a good week!
