Monday 9 December 2013

Forgive Me

I wrote this story about forgiveness. I haven't posted in a while but I'm back with this story and I hope you like it!

Telling people what to do, that gives power. Doing work for someone higher than you, that gives no power. Me? I am the powerful one.  Ava Hawthorn, the one who tells people what to do. I work at the wonderful “Sixteen”- a fashion magazine that I am the editor of, and the only one higher than me is the publisher, and honestly, I am so amazing, that I control him. It’s like cat and mouse. I am the cat and he is the mouse. I chase him around giving him every single detail and making it sound so perfect that he can’t refuse. I am living my dream! My dream to be in charge, to have power and best of all to do something I love. Little did I know, this was going to change….. and fast.

It was Friday evening, I was wrapping up in the office and getting ready to go home and then, I get to visit my elder sister. I love visiting her. She is amazing. Her name is Aurora and we are best friends. We look completely different though. She has brown hair and I have dirty blonde, she has brown eyes, I have blue. But we are similar in so many ways that it’s hard to count. She is a beautiful person, with a kind hearted gentle personality. It is impossible not to like her. We were not always this close, honestly three years ago we hated each other. We picked fights all the time, we disagreed with everything we said and it just never worked out between us. When we lost our mom to cancer three years ago, it was hard on both of us. Our mother was our rock. She was someone who would always catch us when we fell. She helped us solve every disagreement we had and she just loved us with all her heart. It was a tough journey to get from being a complete mess to being better people. We decided that we would stop fighting, we figured that’s what our mother would have wanted and we became best friends.

It’s been like this ever since. We can always talk to each other about anything. I always go to her house when I needed help and when I felt that work was getting over my head and she always helped me out. She has great advice, always has. I love going to her house, not only because I get to spend time with my sister, but because I get to spend time with my adorable nephew Caleb. He is a 1 year, 8 months old precious boy who I absolutely adore. I help her out with him a lot, I baby-sit him when she needs to go out to the mall to pick up something, or when she just needs a break.

I parked my red volvo in my sister’s driveway. I popped the inflatable dummy which I use to go in the carpool lane. It’s a lot faster than taking the regular roads through the city, driving through the city is a nightmare, after all this is LA! I pulled out the bags from the passenger seat and shut the door. I walked down the pavement in my red heels and knocked on the door. A few minutes later I heard the clunking of boots running down the staircase and the locks snapping and finally the door swung open. There she was, my sister stood there in her dark-washed jeans and a printed shirt. She sighed and fell into my arms. “I am so glad you are here!” she sighed into my ear. She pulled away from our hug and then she went on a ramble about diapers and other things that I couldn’t really catch.
“Woah, woah, woah! Slow down! Ok tell me what happened.” I said trying to calm her down.
“Well, I ran out of diapers for Caleb and he’s crying and I have to feed him and I can’t do that because I ran out of baby food.” she said, stressed out.
“Ok, should I go get it? Give me a list and I will pick up everything you want, ok? Now just calm down sweetie” I said in the most calming voice i could possibly get out of me.
“No! You won’t know what to get, he’s allergic to peanuts and a lot of work goes into getting the right things!” she yelled “I’ll go, can you please please please watch him”
I giggled under my breath,  “Of course! Go! I’ll handle him”
She thanked me, kissed Caleb goodbye and left the house hurriedly. I walked up the stairs to Caleb’s room and picked him up from his little crib. He wasn’t crying anymore. We spent an hour chasing a balloon which I blew up especially for him until the phone rang. I left him and ran to pick up the phone. “Hello?” I said. A familiar voice was heard at the other end. I responded to the voice, “Daddy! Hi!”. It was my father. He was the last adult figure I had left, apart from my sister, who I did not really see as an adult figure, more like an equal. I talked to him for the next 5 minutes, we giggled, we laughed, we had minutes of seriousness, all in all, it was a normal conversation between father and daughter. I was just about to give my dad an update on my job when I heard a thud and then silence before a piercing cry filled the air. I panicked, I dropped the phone, praying for the best, I stormed upstairs. I shoved the door out of my way and the worst possible situation was revealed, it felt like a punch in the face.

Caleb on the floor struggling to get up and still managed to cry really hard. His nose was covered in blood. I lifted him up and bounced him up and down trying to get him to stop crying. I lifted his arm and it was blue. I was officially freaking out. I scolded myself in my head as I hopped into my car, buckled him in his car seat and drove to the LA Children’s Hospital. I parked my car and ran Caleb into the ER. He was taken to get an X-Ray. I knew he was in good hands with the nurses so I had to call my sister and fill her in on everything that happened. I was dreading to do this because I knew she is going to be so mad at me. I picked up the phone, dropped a quarter in and dialled her number.  The second I told Aurora that Caleb was in the hospital, she disconnected the phone and was in the hospital in the nick of time just when the nurse came out to give us the results of the X-Ray.

“His muscle surrounding his arm has torn and his nose has stopped bleeding. Your lucky! If his crib was any higher, he could have broken his bone.” the nurse said before walking away. I opened my mouth to say something but my sister stopped me.

“This is your fault! I left you with him to watch him and where were you when this happened?” she questioned angrily.

Shamefully, I admitted that I was downstairs talking to our father. A look of disgust was shot at me before she yelled out, “I hate you! Get out!”. A tear flowed down my face as I tried to reason with her but she walked away. I watched her walk into Caleb’s room, I saw the door closing behind her. My sister hated me, I probably will never see Caleb again, everything in my life went downhill since then. My newest issue of Sixteen did not sell too well, my car broke down and I got sick. I tried calling my sister like a million times but to no avail. She blocked my number. I had no idea what was going on in her life, how Caleb was doing, all I got was a weekly update from my dad who also seemed mad at me.

It was three months later, and Caleb was turning two. I hadn’t seen him since the accident and had not talked to Aurora either. My life could not be going worse, I lost my job because of the three issues in a row that no one bought and I was working in a grocery store checking out items for the customers. I hated myself, and that negative power of hate was altering my perception of life. I was once a bouncy, happy and successful woman who lived everyday like its her last and now I am a miserable, unsuccessful and just a negative person who could not wait for life to end. The three months when my sister hated me made me realize how much I needed her and just made me realize the impact of things on people’s life. Forgiveness does not come like that. It takes time and a big heart to forgive someone who hurt you and Thanksgiving was the best day of my life. It was the day that my sister forgave me, it was the day things went right. It was the day that, after another 3 months of crying on the phone and begging for forgiveness she accepted my apology and things went right.

We are family, and that is not determined by a birth certificate or a marriage certificate, it is determined by the heart and every family has it’s ups and downs. Forgiveness trails along with family, no family can survive without forgiveness. I am thankful that my sister forgave me.

5 comments:

  1. No words........for this beautiful story...Love you.....

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  2. Awesome as always, the closing lines still reverberate in my mind!

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  3. Awesome as always, the closing lines still reverberate in my mind!

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  4. it was great.... keep it up.....
    love

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  5. amazing story, style of writing and most importantly, the heart in the right place. God bless you, you're awesome:)

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