Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II (37 page)

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Authors: Jack Canfield,Mark Victor Hansen,Kimberly Kirberger

BOOK: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul II
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Page 188
The Bridge between Verses
Things do not change. We change.
Henry David Thoreau
My brother is the boy with the big black eyes. He has an aura about him that feels strange and nervous. My brother is different. He doesn't understand when jokes are made. He takes a long time to learn basic things. He often laughs for no reason.
He was pretty average until the first grade. That year, his teacher complained of him laughing in class. As a punishment, she made him sit in the hall. He spent all his time on the fake mosaic tile outside the room. The next year, he took a test that showed he needed to be placed in a special-education class.
As I grew older, I began to resent my brother. When I walked with him, people stared. Not that anything was physically wrong with him; it's just something that radiated from him that attracted attention. I would clench my teeth in anger sometimes, wishing he were like other people, wishing he were normal.

 

Page 189
I would glare at him to make him uncomfortable. Every time my eyes met his, stark and too-bright, I would say loudly, "What?" He'd turn his head quickly and mutter, "Nothing." I rarely called him by his name.
My friends would tell me I was being mean to him. I brushed it off, thinking that they were also horrible to their siblings. I did not consider the fact that their brothers and sisters could retaliate. Sometimes I would be nice to my brother just because they were around, but return to being mean the minute they left.
My cruelty and embarrassment continued until one day last summer. It was a holiday, but both my parents were working. I had an orthodontist appointment and was supposed to take my brother with me. The weather was warm, being a July afternoon. As spring was over, there was no fresh scent or taste of moisture in the air, only the empty feeling of summer. As we walked down the sidewalk, on impulse I began to talk to him.
I asked him how his summer was going, what his favorite kind of car was, what he planned to do in the future. His answers were rather boring, but I wasn't bored. It turns out I have a brother who loves Cadillacs, wants to be an engineer or a business person, and loves listening to what he calls "rap" music (the example he gave was Aerosmith). I also have a brother with an innocent grin that can light up a room or an already sunny day. I have a brother who is ambitious, kind, friendly, open and talkative.
The conversation we had that day was special. It was a new beginning for me.
A week later, we were on a family trip to Boston, and I was in the back seat of our van. I was reading a Stephen King novel,
Rage
, while my dad and my brother sat up front talking. A few of their words caught my attention, and I found myself listening to their conversation while

 

Page 190
pretending to be engrossed in my book. My brother said, ''Last week, we were walking to the bus stop. We had a good conversation and she was nice to me."
That's all he said. As simple as his words were, they were heartfelt. He held no dislike toward me. He just accepted that I'd finally become the sister I should have been from the beginning. I closed the book and stared at the back cover. The author's face blurred as I realized I was crying.
I will not pretend everything is fine and dandy now. Like changes in a
Wonder Years
episode, nothing's perfect, and nothing's permanent. What I will say is that I do not glare at my brother any more. I walk with him in public. I help him use the computer. I call him by his name. Best of all, I continue to have conversations with him. Conversations that are boring in the nicest possible way.
Shashi Bhat

 

Page 191
The Ones in Front of Me
At some point in my childhood, I realized that my parents were never going to get along; the lines had been drawn and the die had been cast. So when my parents announced that they were filing for a divorce, it wasn't a huge shock. I never thought it was my fault. I also never had the illusion that they would miraculously fall back in love. So, I guess I accepted their decision.
For most of my childhood it didn't bother me that they weren't together. In fact, I had the best of both worlds. I got to live in Hawaii with my mom and travel to Los Angeles to see my dad. Somewhere during the process, however, I began to feel the effects of our "broken home." Although they tried not to make it too obvious, my parents' disdain for each other was becoming apparent.
When I was twelve, I wanted to live with my dad, so I moved to Los Angeles. It's not that I didn't love my mom; it's that I had spent most of my childhood with her and started to feel as if I didn't know much about my dad.
After the move, I started to realize how much my parents' divorce really affected me. My dad would tell me to tell my mom to send me money, and my mom would tell

 

Page 192
me to tell my dad that she shouldn't have to. I felt caught in the middle. My mom would try to pull information out of me about how it "really" was at my dad's. It was a constant struggle to duck out of the line of fire.
My parents tried to respect each other, for my sake I guess, but it was obvious that a lot of hurt lay underneath their actions. It had been ten years since they divorced, but it felt as if the struggle had just begun. They constantly argued over money and parenting styles. As much as they both promised that it didn't involve me, it always did. I felt they were fighting over me, and that it was somehow my faultfeelings I didn't have when I was five.
Growing up with divorced parents today seems to be a regular occurrence. It's actually rare to find two parents who are still together, but that doesn't make going through it hurt any less. Although I may not have felt it at the time, eventually, it was something that I had to work throughwhether I was five or fifteen.
I wish I could say that my parents have worked out all their problems, and that we now work as a perfect team. It is never that simple. But, they try. They love me, and while it took all of us a while to realize it, now we know that their love for me will always keep them together in some waythey have learned to work together in order to raise me.
The other day, the three of us got together to talk about my upcoming trip to visit colleges. I think they are both sad about the idea of me leavingand that is what keeps them together: the joy and sadness of watching me grow.
As we sat there the thought crossed my mind,
What if my family were still together?
Then, as I watched my parents intently looking through my college brochures, I smiled to myself,
This is my family, and we are "together."
Lia Gay

 

Page 193
Role Reversal
It was a Friday night, and I had just returned from climbing one of the Red Rocks of Sedona. The night was chilly, the moon was high and I was looking forward to crawling into my warm bed. My faculty adviser, Bunny, approached me as I walked through the arches to my dorm room. She took me to her home where she told me that my mother had been in a terrible car crash and had been taken to the intensive care unit of a nearby hospital in critical condition.
When I got to the hospital my grandmother pulled me aside and said whatever I did, I mustn't cry in front of my mother.
A nurse unlocked the door that led down a wide hallway with machines all around. A strong smell of medicine brought a nauseous feeling to my already turning stomach. My mother's room was right next to the nurses' station. As I turned into the room, I saw her lying on her side, with her tiny back to me and a fluffed pillow between her bandaged legs. She struggled to turn around but couldn't. I slowly crept to the other side of the bed and said "hi" in a calm voice, stifling my urge to cry out.
The cadaverous condition of her body stunned me. Her

 

Page 194
swollen face looked like it had been inflated and kicked around like a soccer ball, her eyes had huge dark bruised rings around them, and she had tubes down her throat and in her arms.
Gently holding my mother's cold swollen hands, I tried to keep my composure. She kept looking at me and rolling her eyes into the back of her head as she pounded her hand against the bed. She was trying to tell me how much pain she was in. I turned my face away from her, trying to hide the tears that were rolling down my face. Eventually I had to leave her for a moment because I couldn't hold my anguish in any longer. That was when it struck me that I really might lose my mother.
I kept her company all day long; in time the doctors took the respirator out of her throat for a short while. She was able to whisper a few words, but I didn't know what to say in return. I felt like screaming but knew I mustn't. I went home and cried myself to sleep.
From that night on, my life completely changed. Up to that point, I'd had the luxury of just being a kid, having to deal with only the exaggerated melodramas of teenage life. My concept of crisis was now forever altered. As my mother struggled first to stay alive and then to relearn to walk, my sense of priorities in life changed drastically. My mother needed me. The trials and tribulations of my daily life at school, which had seemed so important before, now appeared insignificant. My mother and I had faced death together, and life took on new meaning for both of us.
After a week of clinging to life in intensive care, my mother's condition improved enough to be taken off the respirator and moved to a regular hospital room. She was finally out of danger but, because her legs had been crushed, there was doubt that she would be able to walk again. I was just grateful that she was alive. I visited my mother in the hospital as often as I could for the next two

 

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months. Finally, a sort-of hospital suite was set up in our family room, and to my relief and joy, she was allowed to come home.
My mother's return home was a blessing for us all, but it meant some unaccustomed responsibilities for me. She had a visiting nurse, but much of the time I took care of her. I would feed her, bathe her, and when she was eventually able to use a toilet, would help her to the bathroom. It struck me that I was pretty much playing the role of mother to my own mother. It wasn't always much fun, but it felt good to be there when my mother really needed me. The difficult part for me was trying to always be upbeat, and to keep my mother's spirits up when she became frustrated with the pain and her inability to do simple things for herself. I always had a smile on my face when, really, I was suppressing tears in my heart.
My mother's reliance on me changed our relationship. In the past, we had more than our share of the strains of mother-daughter relationships. The accident threw us into a relationship of interdependence. To get my mother back, I had to help her regain her strength and ability to resume an independent life. She had to learn to accept my help as well as the fact that I was no longer a child. We have become the closest of friends. We genuinely listen to one another, and truly enjoy each other's company.
It has been over two years since my mother's crash. Although it was devastating to see my mother go through the physical pain and emotions that she still continues to experience, I have grown more in that time than in all the years before. Being a mother figure to my own mother taught me a lot about parenthood: the worries, the protectiveness and, most of all, the sweetness of unconditional devotion and love.
Adi Amar

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