The Sunflower Card

Every Mother’s Day, somehow, my mind travels back to my very first official teaching job… to a classroom of Class 4B in 2017… and to a little boy named Himanshu.

That day, the whole class was busy making Mother’s Day cards. Tiny hands dipped in crayons, glitter scattered everywhere, children proudly announcing whose mother loved pink, whose liked roses, whose made the best parathas.

And then there was Himanshu.

He sat there giggling with his best friend Harshit, talking, smiling… but doing absolutely nothing. No drawing sheet. No colors. Nothing.

I remember taking rounds of the classroom and stopping near his desk again and again.

“Himanshu, why aren’t you making a card?”

He only smiled.

No answer.

Just that strange little smile children sometimes wear when they are hiding something much bigger than themselves.

Before I could ask again, Harshit quietly told me, “Ma’am… uski mummy nahi hain.”

And suddenly the entire classroom noise faded for a second.

“Kis ke liye banaye?” he had apparently said earlier.

I still remember standing there not knowing what to say. No teacher training prepares you for moments like that. There are chapters for pedagogy, child psychology, classroom management… but nobody teaches you what to do when a child casually hands you the emptiness of his heart.

And perhaps in that awkward helplessness, I blurted out—

“Can you imagine me as a mother and make a card for me?”

To my surprise, his face lit up instantly.

As if someone had finally given him permission to participate.

I arranged a drawing sheet and colors for him, and he carefully made me a yellow sunflower card.

A yellow sunflower.

God knows how he figured out yellow was my favorite color.

Years later, that detail still stays with me.

I once visited his home too. I remember returning with a strange heaviness because it genuinely felt like there was no one really looking after him the way a child deserves to be looked after. More than discipline, more than homework, children need presence. Someone asking if they ate. Someone noticing if they are quiet.

Maybe that is what I saw missing in him.

It has been years now. Himanshu must be all grown up today. Taller, older, probably unrecognizable.

But every Mother’s Day, I remember that little boy a little more than the occasion itself.

Because that sunflower card was perhaps the first Mother’s Day card I ever received.

And maybe… the last one too.