“Your hands are so rough and ugly! I don’t want my classmates to see them and laugh at me!” a boy told his mother. Little did he know that he would regret saying those words a few days later.

“What will I do now?” Catherine wondered after her husband left her. The mother of three met her husband while she was at university and dropped out of her studies when she became pregnant with their first child. Soon after, she married him and had two more children, unaware that her life was about to take a turn for the worse.

Ten years later, her husband left her. Catherine had stayed home all her life to care for her children, but now she had to go out and earn money to support her family. With no work experience and no professional qualifications, her chances of being hired for a well-paying job were virtually nonexistent.

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One day, after dropping her children off at school, Catherine found a shop that was looking for a worker with no experience requirements. She went in, and management hired her on the spot after learning about her circumstances.

The single mother was happy and worked in the store for a few months until she realized that her children were growing up and she needed more money to cover all their needs.

“Should I ask for a raise?” she thought. Catherine was sure she wouldn’t get one, but even if she did, it wouldn’t be enough to meet her family’s growing needs.

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The next day, Catherine was walking home from her shift at the store when she saw a construction site. “I think I can work here,” she thought, and approached the manager.

“Hello, are you hiring?” he asked.

“Yes, we need staff,” the manager looked Catherine up and down. “Are you sure you can work here? This job requires a lot of hard work.”

Catherine loved working with her father in his workshop when she was a child. They often did projects in the backyard, so she knew how hard it was to work with her hands in construction.

“Yes, of course, I can do it,” he told the manager and signed a contract to work 12-hour shifts. The money he would earn working here was more than his current salary, so he quit his job at the store and worked full-time in construction.

However, Catherine kept her new job a secret from her children. She thought they would be ashamed if they found out their mother worked as a construction worker. Even Catherine was embarrassed to work there, but she had no other choice. She needed the money to provide for her children.

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Every morning, Catherine woke up and made breakfast for her children before dropping them off at school. Then she went to the construction site and worked there until her shift was over. She would pick up heavy bricks and put them on her shoulder to carry them from one part of the site to another.

When Catherine arrived home each night, she felt tired and never had enough energy to spend time with her children. She only asked them about their progress at school on the weekends.

One weekend, Catherine’s son, Pedro, told her about an upcoming school competition that required mothers to participate. In the competition, the students would be blindfolded and would have to identify their mothers without looking at them.

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“That sounds great, Pedro!” exclaimed Catherine. “It makes me want to participate!”

“I won’t go there with you, Mom,” Pedro replied.

“What?” Katherine said, frowning. “But why?”

What her son said next was something Catherine wasn’t prepared to hear. She never imagined her son would say something like that to her.

“Mom, they’d have to touch your hands to recognize you, and everyone would stare,” Pedro explained. “Your hands are so ugly, hard, and rough,” he added.

Catherine looked at her hands and rubbed them together. She could feel that her skin had really toughened from her hard work, but she didn’t want to tell her son about it.

“I’ll be so embarrassed when my classmates see your rough hands,” said Pedro. “I won’t be attending the event.”

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Catherine felt her cheeks flush after hearing her son’s excuse for not participating in the competition. She felt terrible but couldn’t say anything in his defense. She had to stay quiet and keep working on the construction project to make ends meet.

A few weeks later, Pedro was walking home with his friends when something unexpected caught his attention. While his friends were talking amongst themselves, he stopped and looked at his mother working at a construction site near their house.

Pedro’s eyes widened when he saw his mother carrying heavy bricks from one end of the site to the other. She wasn’t wearing gloves to protect her hands and had no machinery to help her. She was mixing cement with her bare hands and even operating a drill.

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The boy asked his friends to leave without him so he could stay behind. Pedro regretted being rude to his mother the other day and understood why her hands weren’t soft and beautiful like other women’s. She couldn’t afford expensive manicures after work because she had to save money for her children.

At the end of Catherine’s shift, Pedro saw his boss give her money. He quickly slipped the cash into his wallet and headed to the nearby toy store.

Pedro followed his mother and saw her buy the toy car he had been asking for. She also bought two dolls for his sisters and then stopped at a restaurant to buy dinner.

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While Catherine waited for her order at the restaurant, Pedro hurried home so his mother wouldn’t know he’d been following her. On the way back, he couldn’t stop thinking about how he would apologize to his mother because he felt ashamed for having disrespected her.

Later that night, after Peter and his sisters had finished eating, Catherine gave them the toys she had bought earlier. When she handed the toy car to Peter, she told him she was sorry.

“You were right. I must take care of my hands,” Catherine smiled.

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“Please don’t be mad. I’ll take some time and get my nails done this week, I promise!”

Pedro burst into tears after hearing his mother’s apology and told her she didn’t need to apologize. “I’m sorry I was rude to you, Mom. I know why your hands are so rough and calloused,” he said.

Catherine looked at him, confused, but before she could ask anything, Pedro told her he saw her working at the construction site. “I know how hard you work for us, Mom. I’m so sorry for what I said that day,” the boy cried. “Please forgive me.”

Catherine was surprised but relieved not to have to keep her job a secret. She immediately hugged her son and told him not to worry about anything.

“I love you and your sisters more than anyone else in this world!” she said and kissed her son’s cheek.

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What can we learn from this story?

• Always respect your parents: Catherine’s son had no idea how far she would go for her children until he learned about her exhausting work. Upon hearing of her efforts, he realized he shouldn’t have disrespected his mother.
• Never judge a book by its cover: Pedro refused to go to the event with his mother because of the appearance of her hands. He valued her appearance more than her unconditional love for his children and didn’t realize his mistake until he learned the truth.

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