Author's Note: " Have you seen the movie New Year's Eve: well get your lazy butt off the couch and go out and see that movie! Not only did it touch my heart but it also made me break down into tears. It gave me the inspiration to write this piece. If you love someone let them go, if you really touched their hearts they'll come back."
My name is Emily, I definitely don’t get the best grades in school, and I’m not not the best girl on my soccer team, but my life is far more complicated than the average human being. My mom works three jobs to pay the rent for our tiny apartment and my older brother’s college tuition, not to mention my dad is deployed in Afghanistan. Yeah, we pay the rent but I can’t do what normal American teenagers get to do: maybe that's because my family and I are anything but normal. I can’t go to the movies, I have to work every afternoon and full time over the summer, I’m almost 17 and I can’t date, and I have to buy my own clothes. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family deeply, I just wish I could do something for them so they would never have to worry again.
It was almost Christmas and my Dad was supposed to be gone for the Holidays, which wasn’t the ideal family holiday my mom was looking forward to. In a way I hated my Dad for making our lives so much more complicated, everyone would always come up to my mother and explain how grateful they were for people like my dad who fought for our country. But not me, I hated my father for missing the big milestones in my life, I hated him for leaving us in the position of barely being able to pay rent, but I mostly hated him I feel like he doesn’t care about us.I would love the satisfaction of being able to at the very least say I knew my father but I’ve never actually talked to him. He would come home late in the middle of the night, pack his things, and then get deployed to another place half-way around the world. He would leave us notes saying he missed us and loved us with all his heart: but the fact is, my brother is 21 and I’m seventeen you think he would come home just once, long enough for us to have a normal conversation with him, but no.
I was done waiting for things to change, it was time to move on. I decided to head to the mall, just days before Christmas to buy gifts for my brother and mom. I had a $50 dollar budget to buy something that was quality and nice, which wasn’t a very easy task. My mom has been wanting this blue sapphire scarf for Express for 6 months but we never had it in our budget to buy things like that, so this Christmas I was going to splurge and buy if for her,m it was prices at $19.99. Now I know what your thinking: that’s nothings, I spend that much at the grocery store, but to my family it was a lot. After I bought the scarf I went into the game store to buy my brother a new game for his xbox, I wanted to buy it because he is willing to sell his xbox for us but me and my mother know it is too important to him that the two should never part. Lastly I went to the dollar store to buy some wrapping paper and then I was off, back to my job, like every other day.I worked at the Best Buy which was located directly in the center of the Westchester Mall, but since I’m a wiz with computers it wasn’t difficult to reprogram applications on a laptop or wire the base of an ipad. Some people at school call me a nerd but I’ve learned not to care what people think of me, all that matters is what I think of myself. I think I have a great job, I mean I’m a seventeen year old girl and I have the a job that most people would have to go to college to get. I am proud that I can handle having a job and going to school perfectly, I feel that its a big accomplishment: I am doing something with myself I am not going to let myself become one of those kids who relies on drugs to merely get through the day.
Work was fairly slow today, not much of the machines needed fixing, so once my 4 hour shift ended I decided to surprise my mom and head to the grocery store to pick up some of the necessities our fridge didn’t have at the moment. I picked up three gallons of white skim milk, 1 box of hot chocolate mix, along with 1 carton of eggs, lastly I decided to splurge a Iittle and get a small pumpkin pie that we could all share on Christmas Day,which happened to be 2 days away. The roads we packed, traffic was everywhere, car horns we beeping like crazy, but finally after a good solid half hour of being stuck in the the sea of cars I had reached our apartments driveway.
I searched through the parking lot searching for my Mom and brothers car, but it was no where in sight. I wondered silently to myself where they could possible be at 9 o’clock at night?
After a few short minutes of contemplating what I should do next I decided to go in the apartment and put the groceries away. I was walking past the kitchen counter when I saw I bright pink sticky note taped to the fridge. The note stated that my Mom and brother where at a college seminar and wouldn’t make it home in time for Christmas and that they loved me and missed me a lot. Wow, great family I’ve got I thought in my mind, first Dad, and now Mom and Jason won’t even be home for Christmas. Merry Christmas to me I guess.I decided that I should spend at least part of my day studying for exams, so after roughly 45 minutes I put the books away and got ready for sleep. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and put on my pajamas, the time was 11:05 so I decided it was time to go to sleep. That night I had a dream, not one of those happy dreams though, it was a nightmare that captivated my deepest fears. It was about my family, Mom, Dad, Jason, all of them: they never came home from the seminar, I was left to suffer because I couldn’t pay the bills on my salary and I lost the apartment, I had to drop out of high school because I didn’t have a home. I had to sell my car, and no one was there to help me, they never came back,The time passed and I hoped with all my heart they would come back, but they never did.
The next day was Christmas Eve, since I was alone I tried to make the best of it. I cooked myself a nice breakfast complete with pancakes and eggs. After breakfast I took a shower and studied for exams again. It was 1:00 by the time I had finished studying and I had nothing to do, so I called my boss and told him I could come in today if it was busy and they needed help.
I was just walking in the store when I saw that they place was packed: the register lines started at the check out lines and led all the way to the back of the store. The place was packed, full of angry people who thought they didn’t get the quality they paid for and wanted to make some last minute returns.
One of my co-workers, Cindy, grabbed my arm urgently as soon as she saw she, she urgently told me to go to the costumer service booth and help fix broken products. I was fixing things for over 5 hours, whether it was a digital camera, or merely just a pair of headphones in which the speakers were not working properly. Time passed and my hands got tired: finally after what seemed like forever the store closed at 10 p.m. I drove home after everything was in its place and the front and back entrances were locked tight. The road wasn’t crowded this time, most people were at home of a sleep waiting for Santa to come down their chimney and bring them presents.When I got home I slid my key into the rusty lock and turned it to the right and pulled. I got in and everything looked just how I left it.
I contemplated wrap my presents for my Mom and brother tonight or going to sleep, but I decided upon wrapping them tonight so that when they came home they could open them right away. After wrapping the presents in the wrapping paper I had purchased just days before I went to bed.
In the morning I awoke to the smell of freshly made waffles, my mother specialty. I sprung out of bed and ran to the kitchen, my Mom and brother were making breakfast, they got home for Christmas: it was like all my biggest dreams were coming true!
When my mother saw that I had awaken she hugged me tightly in her grasp and said,” Did you really think we were going to leave you here for Christmas?”
” I didn’t know for sure,” I replied dumbfounded.
My brother came up and hugged my from behind and explained,” Mom wanted to surprise you this year, Merry Christmas Emily.”
“Merry Christmas indeed,” I replied.
My Mom looked excited now that we were all together again,” Well what are you kids waiting for, let’s open presents.”
Jason ripped his presents open: my mom got him a watch which he absolutely needed because he was late, a lot, and he loved the video game I gave him.
Next it was my Mom’s turn to open her presents, she loved the scarf and decided to put it on as soon as she opened the box I had wrapped it in.
I got a necklace which I really loved.: It was engraved with my name and birthday.
“Thanks everyone,” I said.
“Wait hold your horses, there is one more present I got for the two of you to share, but we have to go outside because it is too big to wrap,” my mother exclaimed with excitement.
She lead us out into the parking lot and told us to close our eyes, and of course we did what we were told. When she told us we could open our eyes I didn’t know what to expect, but when my eyes fluttered open with excitement I saw someone: someone I’ve only seen in pictures, someone I’ve never talked to before, someone who I’d heard so much about.
“Sorry I couldn’t get you real presents this year, I just got off my flight,” he said.
” That’s okay Dad, you’re my present this year,” I said with a wink.
My family was finally back together once for all, and as soon as my Dad told us he had retired from the Army, things just got better and better.Our family decided it was time for a big change, and as it turns out after just a few short weeks we were no longer individual people, we were one of those inseparable family that you only see on T.V.: only this wasn’t a movie, it was our reality. My Dad ended up getting a job at Best Buy working along side me, but of course I had to show him the basics. We made more money after a couple of years, enough for a actual house and even enough to cover my college tuition. I was in love with my life now, I never wanted this moment to end: so I held on tightly and never let go of my small, little piece of forever.
