I had a wonderful life while I was growing up. I lived with my mom in a cozy three story house. I had everything a child to ask for, lots of toys, love, and attention. Since I had a single mother, she worked two or three jobs daily to be able to provide the things I needed. At that point in my life, I didn't realize that my mother was slowly becoming sicker and sicker. After becoming seriously ill, my mother became permanently disabled and unable to work anymore because of all the pain that shot throughout her entire body, making her unable to walk. The result of this was my mother not being able to pay the bills.
One day, I was snuggled up next to my mother in her warm fluffy bed. Laughter filled the room proud (as it usually does when we are together). It was a typical day for me but something was different. On this particular day, a noisy truck were drove up my short drive way. My mother and I stopped laughing. There was dead silence and at that point a pin could have been heard dropping. People could be heard getting out of the truck and then slamming the truck door. We heard footsteps rhythmically scuffing on the driveway getting closer and closer to the side of the house where my mom's bedroom window was. I snuggled up closer to my mother because I wasn't sure what they were going to do. When I looked at my mother, she looked calm and relaxed, at least on the outside. The people outside started to do something to the house. We heard clinking and banging on the side of the house. It only lasted a minute or two. Once they left, all was quiet again.
I looked up into my mom's calming hazel eyes and asked, "Mommy, what just happened?"
Everything will be okay buttercup. They just turn off the electric and heat because mommy couldn't pay the bills." My mother soothed.
"When will they turn it on again?" I asked innocently.
"I don't know sweetie."
We lived without electricity and heat for a few days until my mom got paid again. We still didn't have enough to pay the heat bill though. So smuggling up in a bunch of fuzzy blankets became a daily ritual for us. Eventually, one of my mom's friends gave us a heater to keep us warm at night. The bad thing about the heater was that it produced black smoke and all of the walls slowly started to turn from a marshmallow white to a smoky black color.
A couple weeks later, my mother told me that we had to move. I was excited because I thought it would be a new adventure for my mom and me. I love to explore new places. I look high up on my tippy toes and low on my knees. I would explore every nook and cranny there was to explore. At that time, I was only eight years old. I was too young to actually realize that our house was going to be foreclosed.
Once we moved, about two weeks later we moved again. We stayed with a friend for a week. Then we went on to our next home for the moment. Our next home was a shelter. The shelter was a huge one floor building with a playground outside. The shelter was right next to a lake. When the sun was setting, it was picture perfect. The sun set right behind the lake so it looked like the sun was slipping right into the lake. On the inside of the shelter, there is a room with dark orange walls, a TV, and a couple of sofas. That is where everyone would hang out and relax. While walking down the long hallways, there are doors on each side. Usually, there would be three families to a room, depending on the size. Separating the two hallways was a big room that had tables and chairs and a huge kitchen. This is where we would all eat together. At the end of the second hallway, was our room. My mom and I both had our own bed to sleep in. At first they were bunk beds were wrong but I have a fear of Heights. So to take care of this, they separated them into two separate beds. Every day, I made my bed up neatly. It was perfect enough that I could bounce a quarter off the bedspread.
One night I was jolted awake when one of the mothers in my room screamed. No one else woke up though. So I just went back to sleep. However, her two year old daughter started to cry. After a couple of minutes of hearing continuous crying, I woke my mother up. She got out of bed and turned on the light, waking up every one in the process. The light was so bright, it was blinding because of the darkness we are used to while sleeping. The little girl's mother had a seizure. The other mother in the room quickly dialed 911. My mom was a trained EMT, so she tried to keep her alive until the paramedics could show up. I sat quietly on my bed, just watching the horrifying scene in front of me. While I was sitting there waiting for them to take her to the hospital, I saw a gray itty bitty roly poly crawl into a crate that we use as a table. I didn't want to interrupt everyone so I just sat there petrified.
We lived at the shelter for a few weeks but then we got kicked out because my mom got Social Security. Once again, we had to pack up all our stuff and move to our new house. After that, we moved five times within the next three years. This included an eventful move to the chilly state of Minnesota. During the last move, we moved to Newtown, Pennsylvania.
A couple months into my new school, I heard kids talking about their vacations. One kid talked about how they had a beach house and a cabin. Another kid started to complain that they only had a beach house but not a cabin. I desperately wanted to speak up and tell them that they're lucky to have a roof over their heads and a bed to sleep in. They don't know what it feels like to be kicked out of the last place you can live in. They don't know what it feels like to live without heat and electric for more than a couple of hours. They don't know what it feels like to have to warm up your shoes with the oven just to keep warm. I can't blame them because they have not been through everything I have.
I didn't know it at that point but I learned a valuable lesson in life while growing up. I learned that you should never let yourself take anything for granted in life. If I haven't gone through what I did, I don't think I would be the person that I am today. Now I appreciate everything I have more than I did in the past. The events that have occurred throughout my life made me stronger and more capable of succeeding in life because of this lesson that I have learned early in my childhood. If I can go back in time and change anything that has happened, I don't think I would. To never take something for granted in life, can sometimes be a hard lesson for people to learn but I was lucky and I learned it from a very young age and I wouldn't have it any other way.