The Ballad of Katie: Somewhere Under Heaven Series

Thirteen

Katie's POV

They call the birthday where you turn the same age of your birthday the Golden Birthday. Some say it's a milestone birthday and others say it has a lot of luck behind it. I don't know if any of that is true but to me, my birthday has always been rather sweet but that's because I share it with the one person that I have always looked up to, my dad.

It's always a joke in my family that the reason why I'm the proverbial "daddy's girl" is because I was born at 12:03 AM on May 13. Even my dad's made jokes about what he's since called his "favorite birthday gift" which was when I was born. 

His favorite joke is how his little princess who was supposed to be a summer baby since Mom's due date was May 30 which was around the unofficial start of summer in the US (which is even funnier considering Ashton and I were born in London) but decided she would rather be born in the spring and chose May 13 as her birthday. The jokes goes something like this:  "I was expecting maybe some corny gift and a cake, not the birth of my daughter." But of course after that classic infectious laugh followed by his signature move of running a hand through his hair, he would sigh and say, "But I'm thrilled that Katie was born on my birthday because as I said with Ash, the kids are the best gift ever." 

For my birthday, my parents got me a new camera. I took up an interest in filmmaking after borrowing my mom's GoPro and filming some really cool things I saw in the woods. Mom then decided she was going to teach her little girl everything she knew about filmmaking. It was also the year my dad gave me my first guitar. When I was four, he taught me piano and at six, he saw me looking at his guitar and said, "You want to learn that too, love?" Of course I wanted to because even at six, I knew I wanted to follow in my dad's footsteps and if that meant learning how to play guitar and piano, then so be it. It was at the age of six Dad realized I was left handed which proved to be a little tough for him to teach me how to play at first since he's not but somehow he was determined to teach his daughter and one night I saw him on YouTube watching videos on how to teach a lefty to play the guitar. It eventually led to one of the greatest bonding moments for us as Dad took one of his guitars and turned it around to where I could access it easier and said, "Let's give this a try." 

I asked Dad how I ended up being a lefty when he's not and I didn't think Mom was. Dad had a reason for this and he kind of blamed Uncle Shane for that one since my uncle is left handed. "Must have skipped a generation," told me before stopping and realizing something about my mom: "On second thought, maybe your mum is partly to blame because she's ambidextrous." I found out later that my mother is able to write with either hand because she went to Catholic school from kindergarten through eighth grade and he was worried about the nuns since they used to get on him for using his left hand. Grandpa Jackson later discovered that nuns didn't really teach that often in Catholic school but it didn't stop Mom from being able to use either hand. I also found out Mom's got a lot of hyper mobility in her fingers which I seemed to inherit because I can bend my thumb in some very weird ways.

It was three days after my 13th birthday when my world was turned upside down and it all started with a bruise. I didn't think much of it because let's face it, I play lacrosse and soccer so I'm bound to bruise sometime.  One day I was coming back from lacrosse practice when my uncle Shane noticed the bruise on my arm. He didn't think anything of it really but he told my mom to keep an eye on me because he didn't know what the hell was going on.

A few days later, I started experiencing some pain and started turning as white as a ghost. It was my dad who noticed the pale complexion really because I remember the joke that went along with it.

"Katie, are you okay," he asks. "You look more pale than I did around the time I did Twilight."

"Well, Dad, as long as I don't sparkle in the sun, I'm good."