12-27-2007, 04:48 AM
Ok, so my story ended up being sort of sad. <3 Hopefully it's all right. xD Kinda long too.
I wanted to write something kinda realistic and empowering. o.o
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I sat on the window bench of our Menewshan home, watching the snowflakes fall from the sky. The sun reflecting off the snow was gorgeous, but a little bright. Frankly, it was giving me a headache. Just as I was about to get up, the doorbell rang and my sister yelled at me to answer it.
I opened the door and there stood an old woman. Her yellow floral dress went down to her lower calves, where her stockings hung loosely around her ankles. Her steel-gray hair was done up in curls and her blue eyes shone magnificently. A faint smell of the ocean filled my nostrils.
My older sister, Anne, peered at us from the living room doorway. She looked just as confused as I did. The old woman pulled out a few objects from her hefty purse.
“Come here,” she said to Anne with a smile. “I have some presents for you.” As Anne slowly approached, the old woman held out a bottle of perfume and a sack of cookies. Then the old woman turned to me.
“You must be the gloomy one of the family,” she said, smiling warmly. “Here, take this.” She held out a PEZ dispenser with Mickey Mouse on it.
That was the day I met my grandmother, Daffodil.
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My grandmother was a funny woman; she would always play favorites and pick on me. Every Christmas, she would give me a PEZ dispenser with a different Disney character on it and my sister would get fancy clothes and expensive perfumes. On the day I turned 18, I gathered up all my courage and asked her why she did such things.
We sat on my back porch as the sun started to set. She looked at me for a long moment before finally speaking. When she did, it was slow and serious.
“You still haven’t gotten over your mother’s death, have you?” My eyes widened in surprise; she was right. My mother had drowned in the ocean during a typhoon after saving a child four years ago. “Your father told me that you don’t have any hope, that you don’t believe in yourself. Ever since then I’ve been trying to make you stronger. You don’t need fancy things to have true strength, as your mother knew. I’m not leaving this world until you realize that.”
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Each year after that, my grandmother and I became closer and closer and she got older and older. On her 95th birthday, I visited her in the hospital with a bouquet of yellow daffodils and a small gift. She struggled to open it with her small, frail fingers. She smiled when she saw what it was; a PEZ dispenser with a tiny angel on top.
“Without you, I don’t think I would’ve gotten any stronger,” I told her.
A small tear rolled down her cheek and she smiled.
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I held the urn against my chest tightly as I trudged through the snow with my father. It was a cold, bitter day and the island of Menewsha was buzzing with tourists due to the festival. Grandma Daffodil had left one request in her will; that her ashes be spread out in the ocean so that she could meet her daughter once again.
I opened up the urn and whispered goodbye as I tipped it on its side. Suddenly, a gust of wind blew the ashes into my eyes. I started to yell out every curse word I could think of as my dad laughed.
“She’s still playing tricks on you, even after she’s gone, Clocky,” he said, grinning.
I lied about my tears, saying that the ashes had burned my eyes.
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