Why simple gestures are so meaningful

It was my daughter, Aubrey’s, birthday yesterday. I was very excited to spend the day with my girls, since it happened to fall on the one weekday each week that I customarily take off of work. Unfortunately, it was also a day my husband was out of town – which meant that I could not follow our family’s tradition of buying balloons the night before that she could wake up to in the morning.

The morning of her birthday I woke up before her… and felt so bad, again, that I could not run out and get balloons (can’t leave the house on my own to go pick them up, and there’s not much surprise in taking all 3 kids along with me to buy them). So then I came up with an alternative. I simply made her a large “card” on some poster board I had lying around. I blew up some regular balloons and taped them on. Then I stood the card up where she’d see it when she woke up.

It was simple and achieved what I really intended – for Aubrey to know she was cherished, and on her birthday to feel like it was a special day.

It really reminded me of how you don’t have to take the most complicated and complex path to show your loved ones what they mean to you — doing something with the resources you have right in front of you is just as meaningful, especially when the alternative is doing nothing at all.