Living, such a simple thing isn’t it? No, it’s not. For me, living is a word that could change the way I feel in an instant. Living is the complete opposite of what I wanted to be doing. Living is the thing I could not handle. Let me take you back to the day my life changed in two different ways. Let me take you back to the times I was barely surviving. My name is Deborah Blasower and this is my life’s story...
I woke up, exited and happy. Looking around I could see the party streamers and balloons stuck to the ceiling of my room that mum and I had put up the night before. I could hear little foot steps getting closer to me and whispering at my door. It was the day I had been waiting for.
“Is the birthday girl awake?” my father had asked, knocking with a loud bang.
“Depends what you call awake.” I sarcastically replied, jumping out of my bed to open the door without a second of more elatedness to spare.
As I opened the door, I was faced with my annoying, over-caring family that was holding a gift I assumed was for me. My family wasn’t the richest; quite the opposite really. But even with our lack of money, they were able to get me a present. I felt that truly heart warming.
To summarize my family, we were jews that loved each other to the full extent. In our country, we wouldn’t seem like the average jewish family that is forced to live in a ghetto...but lets face it, we were and there was nothing we could do to change our history or lives.
“Eww, she even looks ugly on the 16th birthday!!!” my 8 year old brother Mitch announced with an enormous smile painted on his face, wrapping his tiny little arms around my waist like he was trying to assure me it was just pure sarcasm.
“Awww, how sweet of you to say, Mitch. I love you too little bro.” I declared like I was the queen of the day(p.s., I so was).
We both went silent after my comment back at him, I guessed it was just because he was too chicken to face up to me a second time! What ever the reason was, instead, Mitch decided to practically snatch the present out of our father’s hand and passed it to me as his apology. And he was dam lucky for that.
I didn’t open the gift for a while; I wanted to hold onto the moment so it looked like I was eternally grateful that my parents would spend money we hardly have for me.
“Well, what are you waiting for… Open it princess!” mum begged, almost jumping with anticipation.
Without another second able to go past, I was ripping the wrapping paper off and discovering one of the most amazing thing I had ever witnessed being held in my very own hands.
Looking down, I could see an exquisite, precious silver bracelet with several multi-colored diamonds. It was amazing...one of the prettiest things I had ever seen.
All the gorgeousness of the bracelet brought me back to one thing...the money side of it. I felt like I couldn’t accept it. I felt like I needed to give it back to my mother and pretend not to like it so they could return it and get their money back..
“It was your savtah’s. She loved you very much and when she died, she wrote in her will that her only granddaughter would get her most valued possession...and luckily for you, this was it.” My mother mentioned, most likely seeing the look on my face when I saw it. Oh and by the way, savtah means grandmother.
I was still motionless and speechless. I wasn’t worried about the cost of it now, I was just grateful that my savtah chose to give her most precious thing in her life to me. It was defiantly something to be elated about.
“Okay, lets get this show on the road darling. Your friends will be arriving any time soon.” dad randomly coughed out.
