Little Tiny Hands

Recently, I re-discovered some old papers, cards, and pictures made by my children. Many of their creations were put into "memory boxes" and when the boxes were full, they would be stored in the attic, appropriately labeled with their name and the dates. We delivered our older son's memory boxes to him in North Carolina when he finally had an attic of his own, but we are still the keepers of two more sets of childhood memory boxes.

This Mother's Day card was made for me for my daughter when she was six years old, but it wasn't in her memory box but instead tucked away in my dresser drawer. I found it again, and yesterday when she was here, she saw it for the first time in almost 19 years. The front page is a poem, fairly well known, but I do not know the author:

"Sometimes you get discouraged
Because I am so small
And always get my fingerprints
On furniture and walls.

But everyday I'm growing up
And soon I'll be so tall
That all those little handprints
Will be hard to recall.

So here's a lasting handprint
Just so that it will stay
Exactly as my fingers looked
One Mother's Day in May."


And here are her six-year-old handprints, so much smaller than they are now. But we smiled together about her Mother's Day card, as she compared her adult hands to these little ones. She has grown into a wonderful (and tall) young woman of whom I am so proud, and one day she will have a child who's little handprints will adorn her home. I wish her the same joy these precious handprints have always brought me.