Life with Maryam edited 2

Part 1

May 25, 2013 was a day I'll never forget. It was the day my awesome cousin YoYo was born and brought tears of joy to our whole family. I've never had a brotherly bond like the one I have with him. Even when I was only 7 years old, I knew we would be like siblings. YoYo is a super bright and lovable kid, and even though he loves teasing me about my messy room, we still get along great. My mom, who I call my queen, is an elegant woman with a kind personality and a nurturing side. Her and I have our special lingo that only we understand, even though it can be embarrassing sometimes. Aunt Lara is YoYo's mom and my mom's younger sister. She's creative and kind, and both her and my mom did an amazing job raising us.

Dad is a warm and caring person, who is always there for us and our grandma. Dad is a retired man. He used to work for the national guard but retired about two years ago. The national guard allows people who have served the country for 25 years to retire; that's the least they can give them after turning their bodies to metal from the rigid training for years and the boot camp that they send their soldiers to. My dad once went to a month-long boot camp in Turkey 🇹🇷. It was the longest time my mom and I had spent without dad. Thankfully, it never happened again until he retired. He's into all sea-related things as our family has a history with the sea. My grandfather was a captain at sea; hence, my family is known as Al nawakhadha. Mary, our maid from the Philipines, is an amazing baker and cook who has seen me grow up over the past 7 years. One day when she just became our maid, my mom found her on the window sill thinking she had to clean it on the outside. Of course, when my mom saw her, she almost had a heart attack, thinking she had gone crazy for doing that. Despite my mom's keenness on keeping surfaces clean and wanting everything spotless in the house, she would never put anyone in danger. Thankfully, she came back in, closed the window, and never did that again. She looked like one of those high-rise window cleaners for that, gotta say. My high school best friends Gege, Soso, and Rory all have unique personalities. Gege is the wild one, Soso is calm and polite, and Rory is determined to make the best of life despite its disappointments. Sam, Aunt Lara's husband, is like a father figure to me and YoYo's hero. He's an engineer who always has valuable advice about school, fitness, and education. Miss Zain is a very kindhearted person without a bad bone in her body. She's my diamond and my biggest cheerleader. She has taught me a lot about life and continues to do so. Miss Anne my tenth grade English teacher, is a very ambitious and hardworking woman. She is a joyful presence and a very trustworthy person who knows how to keep a secret One day in the tenth grade, as she was giving us the lesson of the day, I had a question so I asked her. I went back to reading, and a few minutes later another student asked the same question I had asked just a minute ago. She turned back to me, called my name abruptly, and I jolted. Without knowing it, I had replied with 'ha', which she was usually cool about. I was a little taken aback when she thought it was rude that I said 'ha', but it was an isolated incident and it never happened again. Weirdly, we never talked about it either, but our relationship only grew stronger. I'm just glad that she was my teacher, as she is the only teacher that shared the immense knowledge that she had about the English language in classes, even when it was irrelevant to the topic discussed. I genuinely learned a lot from her.