get a mother. When you are a child the perfect gift maybe a hug or to paint a picture. When you are a little older it may just be to spend some time with them. When you are an adult yourself and recognize everything your mother has done for you in the past thirty years it is tough to know what is the best way to say thank you. In a recent video that has now gone viral, one daughter thought that the best way to say thanks to her mother was to give her a pile of cash.
Shalanda Thurmond is 30 years old and her mother is 51. Shalanda has two younger sisters but has a special bond with her mother as her mother had her when she was so young and in many ways they grew up together. Shalanda’s mother didn’t have an easy time raising her children. It was often a life that was lived from paycheck to paycheck and whether her mother only had $20 or less to provide for her children, she made it work, she made every $5, $10, and $20 note work.
Shalanda is now a successful adult and has a steady income. Thanks to her mother she has made it to a point in life where she is comfortable, she can save, and she can afford to treat herself to some fine things in life. Things that she knows her mother never had the chance at because she had to spend every dollar she earned on Shalanda and her siblings. When Shalanda’s mother turned 51, she thought of the perfect gift.
She wrote a nice card for her mother that had a string attached. The string disappeared into a small opening of a beautiful large white box. When she handed her mother the card with the box attached, her mother was visibly confused. Her mother started to read the card.
It simply said how special she was to her children and that she needed to pull something out of the box. Her mother started to pull the string and at first, a $5 note came out, attached to the string. She kept pulling and more and more $5 notes emerged. Soon $10 and $20 notes started to come out too. The young mum continued to pull out those notes until she held $3,000 and a lot of string. While it was not enough to match the incredible amount of money that had been spent on Shalanda and her siblings to give them the opportunities they needed in life, it was enough for Shalanda’s mother to treat herself to something nice. To finally take some money and spend it on herself.
Clearly, Shalanda could have just handed her mother the money, she could have placed it in the box without the piles of string attached, but she didn’t. While Shalanda is likely also a fan of theatrics she wanted to make a point too. Shalanda wanted to highlight to her mother that she recognizes all the times the family managed to get by on so little. That they were only able to do that thanks to the hard work of her mother. That all those small moments added up to a lot of pain for Shalanda’s mother and a lot of fortune for the children. Shalanda showed her mother with this act that the hard work was recognized, that she and her siblings were grateful for everything that their mother had done, and that the time had come to start paying it back.