Tommy's Present

“I must buy some flowers for Mum’s birthday,” Little Tommy said to himself as he sat on the side of his bed.

He got up and opened the drawer where he kept all his treasures: a knife, an old pen, some comics, a battered old cap – and the main treasure, a glass container that had all his money. Little Tommy liked to shake the bottle and hear all the small coins make a jingling sound. The more small coins he had there, the more the bottle jingled.

He poured the coins on his bed and counted up what he had.

“Maybe there’s enough for roses for Mummy. I know she likes roses.” He gathered up the coins again and put them carefully back into the bottle. Then he walked downstairs; out of the house and along the road to the flower store.

Tommy pressed his nose against the window and saw bunches of lovely red roses; green ferns; pretty twigs; irisis, azalea; carnations; tulips and forget-me-nots. ”They’re so pretty…just like Mummy”, he said.

Feeling very important, he opened the door to the flower store and marched up to the counter. The kind sales lady looked down at him,
“Can I help you, sir ?” she asked.

“I need to buy some flowers for Mummy’s birthday. Here’s the money I’ve saved up,” Tommy said happily.

The kind sales lady counted up the money and her face clouded over.

“I’m sorry, sir, the flowers cost such a lot of money and you need to save some more.”

“But it’s Mummy’s birthday tomorrow!” he said with a gasp.

“Well, sir, I can sell you a lovely glass pot to put flowers in. Maybe you can find some flowers growing somewhere and put them in, ” she said.

“That’s a lovely glass pot, yes I’ll buy it. Thank you so much,” little Tommy smiled.

Feeling quite proud of himself, Tommy walked out with a large paper bag containing the pretty pot. He walked along the road and looked for flowers to put in it. He found some. They were a lovely yellow colour and he carefully pulled them up and put them in the pot in the bag.

Little Tommy spent all the morning walking along the roads near his home and collecting lots of colourful flowers.

The next day, Grandma and I went to visit Mrs. Rogers, Tommy’s mother, and wish her a happy birthday.

“Look at the flowers I got,” she pointed at bunches of roses, forget-me-nots, azaleas, irises.

There in the middle of them all was a pretty pot filled with weeds, golden yellow weeds;
dark green weeds; light colored weeds.

Mrs. Rogers took the pot up in her hands and looked at the weeds. She started to cry. “This is the best gift of all,” she said through her tears. “Tommy found all these lovely flowers himself.”

All the roses, azaleas, forget-me-nots in the world were not as valuable as Tommy’s present of a pretty pot filled with lovely weeds.

Grandma said to me as we walked home, “Weeds covered with love mean the world to Mrs. Rogers.”

Love is like gold, isn’t it.It’s even more valuable than gold!
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