Memories: Sweet Sixteen and the Livin' is Easy

Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.

~ George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire

In September, I’m participating in the Sapphire Even Day Blogging Challenge and the Two Pages-A-Day Writing Challenge. 

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on’t look outside.”

Think that’s going to deter a teenager? It didn’t stop me from pressing my face against the glass.  But just-turned-sweet-sixteen year old me didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.  So I shrugged, rolled my eyes and went back to reading whatever classic or new fantasy book I had discovered.

The my mother came into my room and told me that I shouldn’t go downstairs either.  I raised an eyebrow and frowned.  “What is going on?” 

She giggled and clapped a hand over her mouth.  My eyebrow went impossibly higher.

“Nothing.  Just don’t go downstairs until I tell you.”

Then she made the mistake of looking out the window.  So of course, I stood up and looked out too.  And saw a big white truck driving through our front yard.

Weird.

But I had no clue why a) a big white truck would be driving through our front yard (seriously, dudes, what’s wrong with the driveway?!) and b) what could possibly be in the big white truck that my mother wouldn’t want me to see.

“Okaaaay.  Whatever.  I was reading anyway.”

She giggled again and went back downstairs.  I lost myself in my book for another few minutes, but when I heard males voices and a weird bonging sound (no, not that type of bong!), I left my book spread-eagled on my bed and like any normal teenager, disobeyed my mother.

Reality didn’t hit until I was almost to the bottom of the stairs.  The front door and the screen door were as wide open as they would go and three husky guys were straining to move a very large, very shiny black something into the living room.  It was wrapped in heavy moving blankets.  And the bonging sound had come when they bumped over the threshold.

Only one thing makes that sound.  And only one thing has that shape ~ a shape that couldn’t be completely disguised by the blankets.

“Oh my God.  What is that?!”

Dad was grinning like a kid with a new bike and my mother was joking with the moving guys.  My sisters were also in on the big secret and were jumping up and down and squealing like crazy younger siblings do.

“So where do you want us to set it up?”

I looked at my parents, a huge grin on my still surprised face.  “Over in the bay window, please.”

It only took them a matter of minutes ~ minutes that turned into one of those moments where time seems to slow to a crawl, voices become muffled, and you see everything through a haze of starlight and sparkles.  At least that’s how it seemed to me.  How in the world had they managed to buy it without my knowing?  We had all gone to the store together, I had tried out a couple of models.  They never talked longer with the sales guy, no sitting down, filling out papers, money exchanging hands.

They had managed to completely surprise me.  Some kids get a car on their sixteenth birthday.  But I wasn't interested in cars.

So my parents gave me one of my dreams instead:

Image Credit: Pinterest

 She’s no Steinway, but she sounds just as beautiful as she did on my sixteenth birthday.

Oremus pro invicem,

~ Mikaela

Today’s Sapphire prompt was to share a favorite birthday memory.  What is yours?