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The Dress
"Do you like my dress?" she asked of a passing stranger. "My
mommy made
it just for me." She said with a tear in her eye. "Well, I think it's
very pretty, so tell me little one, why are you crying?" With a quiver in
her voice the little girl answered. "After Mommy made me this dress, she
had to go away." "Well, now," said the lady, "with a little
girl like you waiting for her, I'm sure she'll be right back." "No
ma'am, you don't understand," said the child through her tears, "my
Daddy said that she's up in heaven now with Grandfather." Finally the woman
realized what the child meant, and why she was crying. Kneeling down she gently
cradled the child in her arms and together they cried for the mommy that was
gone. Then suddenly the little girl did something that the woman thought was a
bit strange. She stopped crying, stepped back from the woman and began to sing.
She sang so softly that it was almost a whisper. It was the sweetest sound the
woman had ever heard, almost like the song of a very small bird. After the child
stopped singing she explained to the lady, "My mommy used to sing that song
to me before she went away, and she made me promise to sing it whenever I
started crying and it would make me stop." "See," she
exclaimed,"it did, and now my eyes are dry!" As the woman turned to
go, the little girl grabbed her sleeve, "Lady, can you stay just a minute?
I want to show you something."
"Of course," she answered, "what do you want me to see?"
Pointing to a spot on her dress, she said, "Right here is where my Mommy
kissed my dress, and here," pointing to another spot, "and here is
another kiss, and here, and here," "Mommy said that she put all those
kisses on my dress so that I would have her kisses for every boo-boo that made
me cry." Then the lady realized that she wasn't just looking at a dress,
no, she was looking at a Mother who knew that she was going away and would not
be there to kiss away the hurts that she knew her daughter would get. So she
took all the love she had for her beautiful little girl and put them into this
dress, that her child now so proudly wore. She no longer saw a little girl in a
simple dress, she saw a child wrapped in her Mother's love.
