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.