Monkey Lyly was having a very bad day. Her favorite yellow dress, the one with the tiny red flowers and the sparkly buttons, had a rip right down the middle. She’d been playing tag in the trees with her friends when it got caught on a branch and tore. Now it looked ruined—and Lyly was furious.
“I don’t want to wear it ever again!” she shouted, her furry little face scrunched in frustration. Without a second thought, she grabbed the dress, stomped to the kitchen trash bin, and lifted the lid. Just as she was about to toss it in, her mother, Mama Lulu, swung around the corner.
“Lyly, wait!” Mama Lulu called out, reaching her in just a few strides. She gently took the dress from Lyly’s paws.
“It’s broken!” Lyly said, crossing her arms and pouting. “It’s ugly now.”
Mama Lulu knelt beside her and held up the torn dress. “It’s not broken. It’s just been loved a little too hard,” she said with a warm smile. “Things that are loved sometimes get worn. But that doesn’t mean we throw them away.”
Lyly frowned. “But it has a big hole.”
“And I have a big sewing kit,” Mama Lulu replied with a wink. “Let’s fix it together.”
They sat at the table, and Mama Lulu showed Lyly how to thread a needle and stitch tiny loops. Lyly’s frustration slowly melted into fascination. She helped pick out a patch of bright red fabric shaped like a heart. Together, they mended the tear and added the patch as a special badge.
When they were done, the dress looked even more special than before.
“You know,” Mama Lulu said as Lyly hugged the dress close, “sometimes, things become even more beautiful after they’ve been mended.”
Lyly nodded proudly. “Now it’s my super dress.”
And from that day on, every time she wore it, she remembered that mistakes and rips didn’t mean the end—sometimes, they were just the beginning of something better.
