My Story

I’ve never really stopped and looked at life. I saw it through my very own eyes.

When I was little I would go to the beach with my parents and my little sister Cassie, she was three at the time, and I was about six or seven. Not caring if sand got into my hair and left it with a crusty hard feeling; I would roll in the salty sand. The warmth, just as my mothers, comforted me and made me feel safe. I rolled for hours, and for a while, I wouldn’t care what people thought of me.  And when I had had enough fun, I would run into the deep blue ocean and let it take the sand away from me.

My parents had always been in love, and always will be. It completed me and made me feel like a lucky girl. I would run round the backyard with the fairies, and with flowers twirled into my hair. And one time while I was running back there, free, I stopped. I saw life, love, and meaning in a totally different way. I caught a glimpse through the window of my parents.  They were looking directly into one another’s eyes.  The look was filled with love, not lust. They looked at each other like they just had been hit by cupid’s sprawling arrow. All I could think of right then and there was how much I wanted that when I was older. You can even say it was a fairytale I dreamt of like Cinderella had.

I was born at home on a hot day in February at 1:35pm. My mom would always tell me and my sister about when I was born. Even though the story never included my sister or Barbie’s, she was still very intrigued in it. And for a couple of years, we would plead her to tell us the story again and again.  She would say, “When you guys brush your teeth and hop into bed I will.” She said this with a mocking smile, like she knew we would do it, which we did. So as she had said, I went to brush my teeth so I could hear the story for the one hundredth time. As she told the story, we fell asleep, like a baby being rocked by her sweet warm mama.

When you were born your father picked

You up so I could see your beautiful face.

And with your dark blue eyes you looked at me

And you smiled. You smiled right at me.

She always had said this so tenderly it made a tear sit at the corner of my eye, and with a blink, the tear would roll gracefully down the sides of my face. And she would kiss me goodnight.

Sometimes I would wake early over the weekends. I don’t know why, no reason, I just did. I would creep to the kitchen to get a glass of cold milk, and when I got there; my dad was drinking coffee, just as he always did. Being the daredevil child I was, I asked him for a sip of the coffee. He smiled and handed me his mug. I looked up at him with gracious eyes, almost saying “Really?” “Be careful Lil, it’s super hot!” My full name was Lilly Ambrosia Foster, my dad called me Lil, for short. I held the mug up to my lips, scared, yet curious at the same time. It looked mysterious to me. I blew on it to be extra safe for the fear I might burn my mouth off. I took my first sip of coffee. Not only did I end up burning my tongue, it tasted terrible! I was expecting to taste sweet, but it ended up bitter, it was shocking. I made a disgusted face. My dad chuckled his low chuckle. “EW!” I screamed.  That made him laugh even harder. “EW! EW! EW! EW! EWWW!” I started bursting broken ew’s as I handed him his gross, bitter coffee back. I ran to the sink and turned on the water. I thought the taste would never go away.

           I remember this one Christmas as if it was just yesterday. It was about 8 in the morning, Christmas day, and I could hardly sleep the night before from all of the excitement about presents under our tree.  The second I woke up I went over to Cassie’s bed to wake her up. “Cassie! Wake up, it’s Christmas!!” Right when the word Christmas came out of my mouth her eyes sprung open and hopped out of bed. “Come on.” I said. I grabbed her hand and we both ran downstairs together. The smell of fresh christmas tree blew into our faces as we entered the living room. Presents big, small, and circled were under the tree. “Let’s go put ours in piles!” Cassie told me. Every Christmas we would put the presents that were ours in a separate pile in different spaces on the living room floor so we could just dig in when it was ok to. “Ok.” I replied. So we ran to the tree and started to get the presents that had our names in big glittery letters on it. I always thought Santa did this for us, but later when I was 8 or so I found out it was my mom and dad who stayed up late eating the cookies and wrapping the gifts they had bought.. I found this really big present far back in the tree’s needles. It had my name on it. It was really nice to look at. I picked it up. It was sort of heavy. “Whoa is that yours!?” Cassie asked. “Yes.” I turned it around so she can see my name on it. “Wow..” She gazed at it for a minute, then went back to sorting her pile. I placed it near my presents. Mom and dad came down the stairs. Yawning.