Truth Realy is Stranger than Fiction

Only in fiction will you find a girl living in a foreign country falling in love and moving to another country to be with her soul mate. For those of you looking for the real-life example of this, look no further than my mother. She grew up in West Germany in a tiny village (yes, a real village) named Roigheim with her family. She never even dreamed of leaving Germany and had wanted to work at the post office after she graduated school. Not long after finishing school, she and her best friend went to an outdoor concert. There, she met this American stationed in Germany. She was instantly smitten. After some time of what could be deemed courtship, she fell in love, and at the age of eighteen, she left her family and life behind and moved to a foreign country and got married. A few years later, she and her husband had a daughter. Even a few years later, they had another daughter, then a final daughter two years later. Although this is the time when fiction would say they lived happily ever after as a family, the couple divorced and the mom and daughters lived together for close to seven years. Then, one day, the mother met a man that she would marry a few short years later. The happily ever after is still in the process, but it looks like the mother is finally getting her happily ever after from her stranger than fiction life.

A Blessing in Disguise

Two years ago, I started feeling twinges in my shoulder when I was at swim practice. I just wrote it off as normal wear and tear that a swimmer has after thirteen years in the pool, especially one that specializes in swimming butterfly. I would stretch my shoulder, and then get back in the pool to finish out the practice, stretching as the practice wore on. That winter, I let my shoulder rest by not swimming any. The next summer, after less than one week in the pool, I started feeling the twinges again, only this time they were accompanied by pain. Not willing to permanently injure myself, I went to the doctor to find a solution to the problem. I was diagnosed with tendonitis and told to rest my shoulder. That worked, for a few months. When tennis season rolled around, I started having pain and soreness all the time. I went back to the doctor and was sent to a specialist. The specialist told me I was out of tennis for the season. I was so upset because this had been the year that I was really looking forward to and excited about. I would have more experience and hopefully win more than one match. I still went to practices and to support the team at matches. Even though I could not play, something good did come out of it. By being able to listen to our coach’s instructions for all of the players, I think I have grown to appreciate playing. And I’ve also finally learned how to play doubles really well.

Do I Really Appreciate You?

There are always those people in your life that you take for granted. No one is exempt from not really appreciating those around you. Having said that, I can’t help but remember how I used to take my mother for granted. I was ten years old when it happened. A close friend of my oldest sister lost his mother. She had been the only person in his life; he did not know his father, so he and his mother were very close. One morning, he woke up to her having died in the night. When my sister told me this, I was unable to comprehend what that meant. I could not fathom losing my mother the way he did or how he could cope seeing as he was an only child. Even though I was very young, I tried to understand what he was going through with his loss. I tried, but I was unable to. It made me realize that I would not be able to even put on a front like he did if I lost my mom. My mom has always been there for me and I would be lost if she was gone. After that time, I finally appreciated my mom for everything she has done for me and my sisters.

A Sacrifice

It’s always hard to sacrifice something, even for someone you genuinely care for. It was no exception for me when I made a sacrifice for my family. A few years ago, I had a huge swim meet that I desperately wanted to attend because it was the last chance I had to qualify for divisionals in our area of the state. The only problem with it was that it fell on one of the few times of the year that the entire family gathers together. My parents told me that they really wanted all of us to be able to go since we do not see most of our family very often, even though they both knew the meet was extremely important to me. They never directly told me to miss the meet, but the implications were all over the place. For awhile, I had my mind set on skipping the family get-together and go to the meet. I knew subconsciously that it would disappoint my parents is we missed the family time, but I never really thought about it. In the week before the meet, it finally clicked that I should not go to the meet, even if it meant I would not qualify for divisionals that year. I knew my parents were glad that I sacrificed my goal of going to divisionals because they wanted me to spend time with my family.