Читать книгу Finding the Sun Through the Clouds - Dawnmarie Deshaies - Страница 9

Chapter 4

Not Everything Can Be Perfect

Both my parents smoked cigarettes, so that didn’t help my breathing back then. Smoking was a part of the culture; it was thought to be filled with nutritious vitamins and minerals. How things have changed. I still, to this day, have never touched a cigarette in my life. I always felt different from all the kids around me, from my friends to my cousins. I was the sick child, the little wilted flower no one wanted to pick. In and out, in and out. The emotionless hospital and the isolated green tent were the second home I was used to. I wanted to be able to do a breath. It was a time of constant rotating medications. When the hospital would send me home after a week, my lungs felt better, but my mom would always be worried about me. I worried about her.

Every time I would have an asthma attack, I would have to go into my bedroom to breathe better. Some days, my mom would take me out shopping at the mall because they had air-conditioning and that meant we didn’t have to pay for it. And sometimes she would let me pick out clothing and we would put it on layaway. My mom would go in the store and make payments until it was all paid for, and when that happened, it was like Christmas to me. I would have new clothes and shoes. This was before they had credit cards—they had layaway. To me, this seemed normal. Both my parents worked so hard to make ends meet. I remember when my dad had lower-back surgery and he was out of work for the longest time. We had our family car repossessed, and that made things so hard for my mom; she was working double time to keep a roof over our heads.

I can remember eating fried bologna and bologna sandwiches with chips, and my mom always had Pepsi soda in the house and TV microwaved dinners, to be honest. My mother wasn’t an excellent cook, and she didn’t have the time to cook. My mother worked so hard all the time and was so tired from working hard that when she got home, she was utterly exhausted. We just made sandwiches and had microwave dinners.

My best friend, Meg, always had the newest and most beautiful clothing, and her mom stayed home and took care of the house. Sometimes her mom would make me a dress. I really liked hanging out with Meg. We also went to the same school. We both made the cheerleading team together. We loved it and felt like we were fitting in with the other girls. I began to perceive that some aspects of self-confidence began to flower.