We attended Hallie’s curriculum night at school and her teacher directed us to a large bulletin board full of “About Me” pages. She asked us to look through and see if we could find our child’s paper. If we thought we found it, we were to lift it up to see if it revealed our child’s photo underneath.
I started carefully reading through each of the papers. I then realized I could easily narrow the field on handwriting alone. I found a few that could’ve passed for her work and I started to read through them. When I read the bottom right corner, I had to smile. I knew this one was Hallie – her love for panda runs deep!
Of course as her mother, how could I not get a little choked up reading that she wants to be a mother when she grows up – just like me. She wants to be like her mother who second guesses whether she’s doing this parenting thing right. Her mother who expects a lot and in the process generates a lot of tears. Her mother who teaches how to work despite how frustrating it may be. Her mother who has been known to shed a tear or two of her own as she lay down at the end of the night wondering how the day went so bad. All of that – and she still wants to be a mother, just like me. Those are the nuggets worth hanging on to!
By the way – Steve had a slightly harder time picking his daughter out of the crowd. He got hung up on a couple boxes on other papers he thought for sure were Hallie. But when he lifted the paper he didn’t see this crazy face staring back at him.