The old woman labored up the steps to the second story of her home carrying her fancy green coat. Stopping at the top of the stairs and gazing around the quiet hallway, the old woman smiled. In front of her stood the dark silhouettes of the doors to her children’s bedrooms. 

When a house has been lucky enough to have children within its walls, it always contains a fair bit of residual magic. Knowing this, the old woman closed her eyes and listened. Soon she heard the distinct sound of her three youngsters racing around one of the bedrooms and giggling as they tried to catch one another. How she loved the way this house allowed her to hear these echoes of times gone by! 

Of course, other people proclaimed her “echoes in time” to be quite impossible. After all, her three children—the ones she loved with her entire heart and soul—were grown and gone. All of them content to navigate the world without her, no longer needing her or her watchful eye and guidance. 

Despite the fact she missed her children each day, she knew the world was as it should be now, but it had all gone by so fast. Everyone warned her as a young mother, “The days are long, but the years are so very short. Enjoy every moment you have with them.”

Opening her eyes, the old woman saw only the dark and silent hallway. The years had flown by faster than the starship Enterprise traveling at warp speed nine. Now she only had her memories, which she used for comfort, wrapping them around herself like a thick, old, cozy quilt.

Stepping into her son’s room, she flicked on a light and sat on the edge of his bed. Just one more memory and I’ll call it a night, she thought, smiling and staring at the gold four-leaf clover pin with a pearl situated in its center resting on her coat lapel. Closing her eyes again, she conjured a memory. This time without the help of her house.

It had been a luscious warm day in the deep green summer month of August when her six-year-old son had found a four-leaf clover by the pool.

“Congratulations!” she’d told him. “Four-leaf clovers mean you’ll have very good luck and magical protection. Some people say if you carry it around with you, you can even see fairies.”

“I don’t want to see fairies,” he had replied. “Here. This is for you to have good luck.” Plopping the four-leaf clover into her hand, the boy ran off to play with his sisters.

A few weeks later on a walk through the neighborhood with her children, the woman had come across a yard sale. She’d let the children rummage through the tables looking for treasure while she chatted with a neighbor. Looking at her watch, she realized she needed to get home to start supper and called the children to her side. 

“Mommy, can I have a quarter. Please,” begged her son. “The man says I can buy something if I just have a quarter.”

“I have a quarter you can have,” volunteered his older sister.

“Stay there, Mommy,” the boy commanded. “I don’t want you to see.”

Running back to a table, he dropped the quarter into the man’s waiting palm and a small object passed between them. Little legs churning, the boy raced back and presented her with a gold four-leaf clover pin with a perfect faux pearl in the middle. 

“This is so you’ll always have good luck, Mommy,” he said.

There are times in a mother’s life that children will melt you into little puddles of happiness. This had been one such moment in the woman’s life. Tenderly kissing her child on his head, she’d thanked him profusely for the wonderful and very thoughtful gift.

The yard sale pin became one of the woman’s most prized possessions. For many years she’d proudly worn it on her coats and all her dress suit lapels. She’d regal anyone who asked her with the story of the yard sale pin from her little boy.

After her son graduated from college, the unthinkable happened. The pin disappeared. She looked everywhere. It could not be found. The woman had never known such great distress. Nothing could have felt worse to her. At Thanksgiving that year, the moment came that she had been dreading. Her son asked her why she didn’t wear the pin anymore, and she had to confess the pin had been lost. 

His look of disappointment hurt her beyond measure, and she realized she’d injured her son’s heart. Something no mother wants to do to her child. And so the woman grieved, as one does, for precious things lost and broken.

A month passed and Christmas arrived along with her three children. The children filled the house with such activity, love, beauty, humor, and kindness. How she loved spending time with them! How precious their brief visits home now were to her! She was sure they couldn’t imagine how much she loved having them all safe and sound and, for one brief day or two, under one roof again. 

The gift of her children’s presence was always gift enough for her, however, this Christmas was to be extra special. Waiting under the tree for her sat a sparkling gold-leafed four-leaf clover with a real pearl. A Christmas gift from her perpetually thoughtful and generous son.

“I won’t lose this one. I’ll cherish it forever,” she’d promised him as her heart overflowed with a mother’s joy.

The woman glanced at the fancy green coat in her lap, admiring the four-leaf clover on the lapel one more time. Rising, she snapped off the light and headed toward her own bedroom.

“Thank you, son. This pin means the world to me. Your sisters and you mean the world to me. Thank you all for being mine,” she whispered into the darkness.