The Heartbreak

Chapter Seventeen

I had run into my room, I threw my hair up into a pony tail and threw on my sweat pants with a comfy white tank top. Sure it wasn’t anything classy but all I was planning on doing was spending some quality time with my mother.

            It had been awhile since we had a movie night, long before we even moved here we hadn’t been able to sit and watch a few movies together. With my mother always on the go it was hard for her to keep up with my life. I reached over to my night stand and grabbed the photo I had framed there.

            The photo was of my mother, brother, and I standing on our porch. Our neighbor had come over that day to visit my mother. She was an older elderly woman whose name was Carol.  She was older than my mother by at least twenty years, but no one really knew her age. She came around to babysit Daniel and me so my mother could work extra shifts.

            The day Carol came over wasn’t to babysit us, she had come over to celebrate Daniels 9th birthday. My mother had bought him his first camera. I remember the look on his face when he had opened his present.

                                                                                                                                                           

            “Mel when can I open my presents!” Daniel pleaded with me.

            I smiled back at his pleads, trying to hold out until our mother had gotten home so she could see him open his present. I looked down at him and ruffled his dark brown hair. He had decided to let his hair grow out past his eyes; it was his newest “style”.  His eyes were a light green like mine. They were brighter and showed more life than mine did though. He only stood about four feet, which meant his head only met my shoulders.

            “Mom will be home any second Danny just wait a few more minutes okay?”

            He smiled, “Fine I will wait, but she better be home soon! I can’t wait!” He yelled running down the stairs and plopping onto our couch.

            He sat on the couch and waited patiently for me to join him. He didn’t want a birthday party, he never had. Each year on his birthday Mom, Daniel, and I would gather around and have a movie night. We never could afford for him to have an amazing birthday party, but to him spending the day with us watching whatever he wanted was just as great.

            He wasn’t like most children, who were greedy and wanted to be spoiled. Daniel only required love, he understood that we weren’t rich and that money was hard to come by. He accepted it all the same, even when the children at school would tease him for his low income clothing.

            I had decided to sit on the left side of the couch, while Daniel had wanted to sit in the middle, leaving our mother to the right of the couch. While we waited for our mother to arrive home he decided we could watch some TV, I agreed with him, watching whatever he wanted that way he wouldn’t beg for me to give him his gift.

            We were in the middle of a Scooby Doo episode when our mother walked into the house. She had only taken one shift today, so she could come home and spend the rest of the night with us. Daniel had jumped up and hugged her, holding her as close to him as possible. She leaned down and picked him up giving him the biggest hug she could muster. She whispered in his ear, “Happy birthday Danny.”

            He smiled back at her and ran over to the table. “Mommy when can I open my present?”

            “How about as soon as we eat and then you can open it up.” She exclaimed putting him back down.