Being a single parent, I get overwhelmed with all the things my daughter leaves around the house. I am always picking up something that shouldn’t be there. One of my biggest irritants are those long clear, tube popcicle wrappers. Of course, I buy boxes of them in the summer and leave them in the freezer for all the neighborhood kids. They love them and yet I get a little crazy when I find those wrappers all over my house.
Every time I’d find one, I would feel my irritation rise and then I’d yell at my daughter, “why can’t you put these in the trash, they are driving me crazy.” I would make my usual threat that I was not going to buy anymore if she didn’t throw the wrapper in the trash. Of course, the next time I was at Costco, I’d buy the box again.
Then one day, as I’m about to yell about the wrapper, I stopped and said, “what if every time I saw one of these wrappers I saw it as a note from you saying I love you.” Well, my daughter loved this and said, “yeah, what if it was written in big letters, I love you , mom?” We, both got a kick out of this. The next morning I went down to the kitchen and next to the trash was a wrapper, folded up with a sticky note wrapped around it with a big I love you mom written on the note. As I picked it up, the joy inside welled up and I knew I’d found another way to see and irritant as a reminder of love. That wrapper sits in my kitchen window as a reminder.
The ironic part of this story is, my daughter has started putting the wrappers in the trash! Go figure!
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