Conquering Obstacles (Part 15--The Letter)

When we returned from our trip to Spokane, it was as though it had never happened. Other than "How was your trip?" neither of my parents talked about it, and I somehow thought that it probably wasn't a good idea to mention it myself. My mom's comment "There were no promises" stuck in my mind; and for the next several weeks that's all I thought about.

Walking through the door one afternoon, I saw both my parents sitting in the dining room, a letter lying on the table between them. Seeing the return address, I knew that it was from the hospital. "Did you read it, Mom? What does it say? Tell me. Is it good news?" As she handed me the letter, I knew that they had already opened it. There was total silence as I read the letter not only once, but twice.

"Mom! This is super news! They have accepted me as a patient! and it says I need to be there on June 1."

"It's wonderful news, but your father and I need to talk to you about it." I'm thinking to myself, "There's nothing to talk about. I can go. I have no idea what the problem is. This is what all of us have been waiting for," and then she continued.

"You need to understand a few things. First, we don't know long you will be away from home. It could be months. You also need to realize that we won't be able to travel to Spokane to see you because your dad has to work and I need to be here with your brother and sister. You'll need to finish your schoolwork early because you will be missing the last two weeks of school."

"That's not a problem, Mom. What's wrong?"

Then she dropped the bomb! "Your father and I want you to be the one to decide whether or not you go. The final decision is yours."

"You are joking, aren't you?"

"No, We're not going to force you to do anything you don't want to do. We don't know what its like to be you. Maybe you're perfectly happy with the way things are. We don't want you to be unhappy living away from home for heaven knows how long. And we all need to remember that 'there are no promises.' We need to contact Mr. Smith by Friday so that will give you a few days to think about it."

I muttered, "I'm 14 years old. I'm just a kid. You have to tell me what to do. This is not fair!" as I walked away from the table and headed to my bedroom where I would spend most of the night thinking about what had just happened.


To be continued...