Once Upon A Lifetime

Chapter Forty-nine ~ Planning

Taalia's POV~

The night after Aasim proposed to me (AAHH!!), I couldn't sleep. I stayed awake until Fajr just thinking about it and even after I prayed and read my Quran, I still couldn't sleep. The sun was starting to rise and when I finally realized that sleep was dead for me, I went to my bookshelf and stared at the shelf with all of my notebooks. These were my journals, or more so diaries, that I had written over the years, starting from grade six. I remembered my very first one was this beautiful blue notebook my parents had bought for me from Niagara Falls. The cover had blue fur on it and had a picture of The Maid of the Mist, the popular ferry at the Falls. While grade six wasn't the best year for me, the notebook itself made up for it. It was just so pretty!

Once I had started high school in grade nine, I stopped writing journals. There weren't many things to write about and I never had the time anyway. Halfway through grade ten however, I was looking through my old journals and realized how much I missed writing them. So I started again and since then I hadn't stopped. There were so many notebooks that I had reserved one whole shelf for them and soon I would need another.

They were all arranged chronologically and I took out the most recent one, a plain lavender notebook with a little blank white box on the cover. On it, I had written 2015. There weren't many pages left but there was enough for at least one more entry. I went over to my desk by my window and took out a black inked pen and began to write. I wrote about my amazing day yesterday, starting right from the moment when Misha woke me up to the part of me not being able to sleep at all. My hand started cramping but I didn't care and continued to write. When I finally finished, I looked up to see that the sun had fully risen and it was around eight o' clock. I looked down at the last few words I wrote then closed the notebook and put it back in its place on the shelf. I fiddled around with the pen in my hands as I looked around my room, especially at my desk and bookshelf, my two most favourite places (other than my bed of course) in my whole house. Would Aasim let me take them to our home after we got married? My eyes widened at what I had just thought of and felt my cheeks burn up. I chuckled quietly to myself and shook my head.

Still seemed pretty unbelievable.

As usual, the Khan household woke up around eleven that morning. My parents and Raza were all in exceedingly good moods and kept smiling at me. Raza kept hugging me and this time, I knew why.

That afternoon, my dad and Raza went out to get groceries. Why Raza went, I didn't know. He almost never left the house.

I was in my room, cleaning up my things since I had nothing better to do, when my mom came in, holding an old photo album. I gasped when I saw the cover. It was the one I had begged my mom to make when I was about ten years old. It was filled with pictures of me and all of my friends over the years, mainly of the three you know today. Aleena was occasionally in it but during the years when we were still in grade school, she and her family didn't come up to Canada very much.

I grabbed the book from my mom who laughed at my reaction and sat down next to me on my bed as I excitedly opened it up. The very first picture was a very, very old one. It was when Misha and I were still babies. I was the bigger baby then, and I was wearing a dark blue onesie while, of course, sucking on my thumbs, which was a terrible habit that lasted until I was five years old! Misha was wearing a soft pink onesie and was staring at the camera with her eyes opened just a bit. I was guessing she was around three months when the picture was taken so I was nine months old. We were both lying in carriers and sitting around the carriers were - you guessed it - Aasim and Saqib, who were about two years old. Saqib was holding onto the handles of Misha's carrier and had a bright smile on his face. Aasim however, was looking down at me, with a look of curiosity on his face. I also happened to be looking up at him, all while sucking on my thumb and smiling.