Young Writers Society

It was a freezing December morning when my mom dropped us off, kissing and hugging us goodbye as we approached Nan and Pap’s doorway. My siblings and I were staying at my grandparents’ house for the weekend while my mom and my step father, Mark, went to Florida to celebrate their anniversary. Their anniversary is in September, and why they were going to celebrate in December -three months after it was already over- raised a few suspicions to me, but I went along with it anyways, not really having any proof that would lead me to think otherwise. Mom and Mark have raised us to be extremely family oriented; leaving us kids behind was something that happened on very rare occasions. Even on those occasions, they left for an hour or two- never for a week. I was not disappointed to be going to Nan and Pap’s house, however, so I went along with it. Mom kissed and hugged us goodbye one last time, got in her car, and disappeared out of the driveway.

I greeted Nan and Pap with a hug and ran to the toy cupboard. My brother and sister went to play in one of the spare bedrooms, and I pulled out a puzzle with two kittens in a basket on it. “Aw! Look at the kittens! Can we do this puzzle, Nan?” I begged. “Sure we can!” she said. We cleared off the table and began working on the outer edge of the puzzle. I finally found the last piece and reached across the table to put it in place, but just as I did, I knocked off the box with the rest of the puzzle pieces in it onto the floor. “Uht oh” I said. Nan asked me to pick them up while she went to check on my brother and sister. When she came back, we kept working on the puzzle until we had them all in place, but much to my dismay, we were missing a few. I looked all around the floor, and they were nowhere to be found.

Disappointed that we couldn’t finish the puzzle, I made my way to the living room and pulled out my book. I love to read; books have a way of taking me to another world, allowing me to forget my own for a while, but not this time. As I sat there flipping from page to page, I heard Nan say “They’re headed down there to look at houses now”. The statement pulled me abruptly away from the book, like a farmer pulling a weed from his garden; so quickly I got up and made my way to the kitchen. “We’re moving to Florida?!” I asked Nan. She hung up the phone with, who I found out later, was my Grandma, and reassured me that she was talking about someone else. Despite what she was telling me, I knew that was not the case. Nan is not a good liar, and it was evident that she was, in fact, lying as I watched her face turn as red as a tomato in a matter of seconds.

I was ecstatic when I had first heard the news. I had a clear view of us going the beach, and Disney world. As I followed her down the hallway, I persisted, saying “We’re really moving to Florida!” “You are” She admitted, knowing that she was not going to fool me. She looked at me with pure devastation, and suddenly, the ocean and Mickey Mouse faded from my mind, as I started to realize what moving would really mean. I would have to leave everything behind: my family, my friends, and my school. I started to cry, finally understanding why Nan didn’t share the exasperated grin that I did at the beginning of the conversation. She hugged me and told me that nothing was permanent, that there were still things they needed to figure out this week before they made their final decision, and asked me not to tell anybody. When she said that, I knew she essentially meant my brother.

My brother, Timmy, and I fought –and still fight- all the time. We’ve exchanged punches, and rude comments that we would never actually mean, just as siblings do. One thing that’s always remained true is our ability to cooperate together when we need each other, even if it was for something as little as convincing Mom to let us stay up later; we make a good team when the situation presents itself. I desperately wanted to tell him what I had found out; I knew we would talk about it and make sense of everything together because even when the strongest tide rolled in, I knew I could rely on my brothers’ strength and bravery to pull us through it. I managed not to tell him that week, and just as I had imagined he would, he stayed strong when he found out.

My step dad left for Florida a few months before we did to get started with his new job and we moved down in the summer so we could finish our school year in Pennsylvania- and to get everything packed. Our house was filled with boxes of picture frames and decorations taken off the walls, everything from our rooms, and the bathrooms, and the kitchen. Our whole life became nothing but boxes, but I realized it didn’t matter what we packed in those boxes- what mattered the most was what we carried with us in our hearts.

When it finally became time to move, we got a huge Uhaul to load all of our belongings. I watched as Mark and Pap carried everything heavy out of the house: our beds, the couches, the kitchen table. Soon enough, all the boxes in our rooms were taken out, and my siblings and I were running around playing as the house that held our childhood became empty, little by little. Once everything was loaded, we took one last look around, gathering anything we had forgotten. I couldn’t help tearing up when we left there for the last time. This place held many memories for me, memories that I still hold close to my heart. I lived there for six years of my childhood, and soon enough, I’d be unloading that same Uhaul at a new house, with new neighbors, in a new town, starting a new life. As we pulled out of the driveway and headed down the road to Nan and Pap’s house, I couldn’t help but think that our old house would never be the same.

We approached Nan and Pap’s house on one of the darkest afternoons I have ever seen. The Uhaul was loaded; everything we owned was piled in the back, we all had our travel bags ready and a cooler that Nan and Pap prepared for us with drinks and snacks to take for the dreadful car ride that was to come. Nan told me that she had a present for me before I left. She grabbed a box on the kitchen table and handed it to me. When I saw it, I realized it was a brand new kitten puzzle. “I want you to finish it this time” she told me, remembering what happened last time. “I will,” I told her, with a smile on my face, “thank you.”

We knew there was nothing left to do but say our goodbyes and get on the road- but not one of us was ready for that moment to come. Nan and Pap walked out to the car with us, putting off the goodbye until we absolutely had to. We exchanged hugs, and the tears started streaming down our faces. Goodbyes have never come easy for my family; once one of us starts to cry, we all start to cry, and just like a chain of dominos, our hearts collapsed one after another. “Find a good church down there,” Pap told us through mournful sobs. His words weighed heavy on my heart; it absolutely devastated me to see him cry like this.

We said our final goodbyes and got in our designated seats in the car, shutting the doors behind us. As we slouched down in our seats, I stared out the window, watching the rain start to come down. Nan and pap were standing on the porch, waving, many tears still streaming down their faces. My family, my friends, the entire foundation my life was built on was right here, in the streets of small town Muncy. Despite how much it hurt saying goodbye, I think we all carried a small bit of hope with us on the journey that was about to begin, just as soon as we pulled out of the driveway.

Mom brought along some enthusiasm that we had almost forgotten we were capable of. She’s the kind of mom who will ride on the back of a cart in the grocery store parking lot just to cheer you up, take you to the gas station at midnight on your 18th birthday to let you get lottery tickets, and who knows just what to say and do to make every situation just a little bit better. That was no different than the situation we had at hand that day. Despite the distance, despite the fact that everything we’ve ever known was now back at home, my mom talked about our new house, and made jokes about being able to go to the beach on Thanksgiving or Christmas. She mindlessly found so many things to be positive about which changed the mood in the car drastically; that’s who she was, that’s who she’s always been. In that respect, she’s the glue that has held us all together, no matter how sticky the situation got.

The car ride was strenuous and my patience was running thin, but lucky enough for us, we did find something to laugh about. My sister and I saw an older lady with a bird cage in her car -but it wasn’t only that that caught our attention- the bird cage was buckled. We laughed about it for a long time, until one of us got the brilliant idea to write on a piece of paper: “Did you see the lady with the buckled bird?!” and we showed it to everyone we passed on the highway. I remember one couple drove in a truck, and the man looked over at us and started laughing and he shook his head no. In turn, we started laughing as well because the thought of the lady with the buckled bird was honestly the funniest thing we had seen all day. It seemed as if laughing together brought us closer; after one of the saddest days any of us had ever known, we needed each other to lean on, and the sound of my family laughing together was as harmonious as an orchestra, flowing freely from one note to the next.

We had been in the car for nearly twenty four hours. We had been in Florida for about four hours already, and we were anxious to just be at the house already. My mom pointed out signs for Port St. Lucie, the place that we would soon call home. My sister and I were overly ecstatic, screaming “WE’RE ALMOST THERE EVERBODY! WE’RE ALMOST HOME!” Part of our excitement was to be out of the car, part of it was anxiety to see what this new place held for our family, but a lot of it came from the realization that I like to believe we all made on the car ride down, and that was that we were going to be okay in this new place, not because of what it had to offer, but because we had each other.

We arrived at our new house. It was pitch black outside with the exception of the moon. We went inside and looked around, and soon enough, my siblings and I were declaring which rooms we wanted. Once the excitement settled down minimally, we ordered pizza and began bringing in our mattresses and laying them on the floor. Besides the mattress, my room was empty; I sat there for a minute, taking everything in from the past two days. Starring at the plain white walls, it made me stop and realize that this was a clean slate for me. My life in this new town, in this new house, in this new room, began today. Suddenly remembering the puzzle Nan gave me before we left, I ran outside to get it out of the car. I brought it back, ripped it open, and started diligently putting the pieces together. I suddenly knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

As I held the final piece in my hand, I realized that the puzzle was much like my life throughout the journey I had just partaken; in the beginning, there was a lot of confusion. There were many questions that needed to be answered about different pieces, and roadblocks that needed to be worked through. Sometimes there were a few missing pieces, but that just meant it was time to start over, which was exactly what I was doing in Florida. I thought about how every member of my family was a piece of a bigger puzzle, and this experience unanimously shaped us into the strong family we were always meant to be. I took out the puzzle glue and glued it together, making sure I covered all of it. I took out a frame from the box titled “Living Room”, put the puzzle inside, and hung it on my wall. I stood back, admiring the completed puzzle in its entirety. Every piece meshed well with the next, and I couldn’t help but feel that my life was the same way. Now that I was in my new room with three blank walls staring back at me, I returned to the thought I had before. This was a fresh start for me, I could fill these walls –and my life- with whatever I wanted, but there would always be that one wall with the puzzle from my past hanging on it. My past would always travel with me, but moving to Florida made room for an entirely new future.

We were here, and that’s where we were waiting to be for many months. There was a big adjustment that needed to be made still, but learning what I had learned that day, I was confident that this is exactly where I was supposed to be, and the hardest part was already behind us. Looking back, it wasn’t as scary as we had once thought it would be. No matter what life threw at us, we always had each other. We needed each other- when we moved to a new place, with new people, our family was the one thing that remained the same. It became my rock that everything else built off of, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Moving to Florida helped me to put the puzzle pieces of my life together.