Fate. Destiny. The stars. It's said that all of these things determine the way that your life is going to turn out. People say that there's no sense in fighting them, that no matter what way you turn, no matter how you try and evade it, your destiny cannot be changed. I used to think that, but then I wise old man taught me a little different. Maybe your destiny is set in stone, maybe the fates rule with an ironclad fist, but the one thing that I do know is the stars are just a little different. They expand and shrink and change with the seasons. Just because you can't always see them doesn't mean that they're not always there. And sometimes, in the darkest of nights, they're the ones that guide you home. Even if you didn't know exactly where home was until you find it.
I never sleep very well the night before my birthday. I'm not anxious about some party, my dad and my brother just always stay in, get some sort of takeout, and watch whatever movie I want. This year I've decided on an all night Parks and Recreation marathon and Italian. In recent years my brother has picked something action packed like Borne or Die Hard while my dad goes for documentaries. I'm not too curious about what I'm getting either. Whether it's new shoes, or that Bastille CD I've been wanting. It's a cello. Dad already told me.
But there's one thing that keeps me up, waiting at the crack of dawn for the post. There's a letter, sometimes even a package, that I have to get every year. It's one of two days a year I get to hear from her, but it's the only day when she talks to me, and me alone.
She left when I was six, shortly after my birthday. I thought she was leaving for work one morning when she stopped and kissed me and Sokka extra hard and told me that she would always love me and that she would come back for me one day.
My fifteenth birthday is tomorrow and I haven't seen her since.
On my seventh birthday, I got a postcard from Katmandu. It had a picture of a Buddhist temple with a pointy golden roof and weird, staring eyes painted beneath it. The message was written in multiple colors of felt pen and had loads of kisses on it.
When I was eight, a postcard of a donkey with flowers in its mouth, the postmark said Ireland. The next year I got an actual birthday card and a handmade ragdoll that I carried everywhere with me even though I felt like I was a little too old to be playing with dolls.
When I was ten there was a postcard from Morocco with a girl with loads of gold bracelets on. The next year I got a rainbow striped hat that I wore every day until it started to fall apart, and a postcard from Whales. They're both stuck on my cork board along with everything else she's sent me.
For my twelfth birthday she sent me a book about the power of the elements and how they're all tied together. When I was thirteen, she sent me a jade bracelet and a postcard from somewhere in Thailand. It had a picture of an elephant on it. Last year she sent me a necklace with a tiny chunk of pink quartz at the end and I wear it all the time. Even at night.
There was no postcard that year. Just a letter. It was the kind of letter that was difficult to read, even now. But it was a letter that I also needed years ago. It said that she loved me, and that she was sorry and that we would we would be together again someday. I stuck it to my corkboard along with all the other things she'd sent me over the years.
I love my mum. But I can't remember her, not really.
I have two photos of her and both are on my corkboard.
The first is of her and Dad and little Sokka standing in the rain in front of a courthouse, just married. My mum is strong and sturdy looking. Tan skin and brown hair lightened by the sun, that falls just past her shoulders and it's all braided. She's wearing a sack dress (that was once a lace table cloth) over light blue tights and no shoes.
My dad just looks so different it's scary, his hair is way past his shoulders and he's wearing this huge black sweater. All smiles.
I'm in this photo too, just a bump, hidden from view by the flowers that mum's holding some panda lilies she picked up from a random park along the way to the courthouse.
The second photo is five months later and there I am for real. I'm a few weeks old; I was small, even by baby standards. I had blue eyes and light brown hair. Mum's face is looking at the camera, looking pale and lost. I've searched that photo over and over again for signs of blissed out motherly love and all that happy family stuff. I just can't find it. She just looks lost. Unhappy.
We lived all over when I was younger. Never settling in one place for too long. We lived in a bus, a caravan, a crumbling flat where mold grew on the walls. We toured the music festival, Mum and dad selling lentil soup, dream catchers, scented candles, and homemade earrings. You name it, they did it. They also worked in an organic veggie garden, a whole food café, and even a clog workshop. We lived off of welfare and bought me and Sokka second-hand shoes and forgot to brush my hair so it got all matted and tangled and fluffy and they never cut Sokka's so it made old ladies at bus stops shake their heads and tut.
Mum and Dad were New Age travelers-hippies, punks, modern-day gypsies, my childhood was a blur of tents and festivals and scruffy vans, a ragtag group of happy strangers in mismatched clothes and weird hair.
In the end, they tried to stay still, to settle in one place. Be a "normal" family. They tired, Dad said, to give us a name, a family, a future. A life. Mum tried. But not hard enough.
Eventually she ran away with a guy named Hao. He was taking a camper to Katmandu, and I guess Mum thought that was a better idea than staying around another fifteen years for wiping my nose and not brushing my hair or reading me stories about fluffy bunnies.
We managed Dad, Sokka, and me. We found a flat without mold on the walls and we started school and dad started art school, learning how to do ceramics, which is just a fancy word for pottery. We made friends with Toph and Suki and Aang, and Dad made mugs and bowls and fancy plates, all glazed with speckled stuff. He also made beautiful models of elves and mermaids that all looked a bit like Mum, but I never told him that.
He finished his course and we rented a place with a workshop attached, and after a while he made enough money for us to live on, selling the bowls and plates to craft shops and the elfy-things to fancy shops and galleries. We stopped eating lentil stew every day and progressed to French bread, waffle fries, and frozen lasagna. We were happy.
Mostly.
Last Christmas, Dad bought me these lights and I draped them all around my corkboard, the place with all the letters and postcards and photos and everything else she's ever given me.
Dad came in one day after I'd put it up and said, "It looks like some kind of Hindu shrine." I just shrugged, because it kind of did. But that's okay, I like it.
It's all I've got of my mum.