A New Day

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~Josh Hargrove 

 

“Wake up honey” I hear from Mama as I wake up in the morning. She looks tired, looks like she didn't get any sleep at all. Her eyes look as if she has been crying. I ask her what's wrong. She tells me simply “nothing honey, let's get ready for school”.

 

I let it go and headed to the bathroom to get ready. I walk into my bathroom, grab my toothbrush out of my paw patrol cup, which I’ve had for what might be too long now, and brush my teeth, minding the gaps left by the teeth I’ve lost.

 

As I exit my bathroom dad is outside the door. He looks drained the same way as Mama. “Good morning buddy, how are you this morning?” I reply that I am very sleepy, but excited for gym class today. “Okay, when you are done in the bathroom come on down to the living room your mom and I have to talk with you.” “Ok dad I’ll be down in a minute.” I walk into the living room and Mama and Dad are sitting down watching the news. I think they were “leaving room for Jesus” like grandma always said.

 

“So buddy your mom and I have decided that, since you are doing so well in school, we are going to give you an extra Christmas this year. One in December and one in January." Then mom started speaking. “Yes honey, we are going to get you a lot of gifts this year." At first, I was afraid that the news they had to tell me was going to be sad or bad due to the fact that the feeling in the room was terrible. But it was some of the coolest news ever; I get to have two Christmases.

 

“Okay bud, go get your bookbag so we can go to school”. “Okay” I said to him as I left the room. I ran to my room as fast as I could to grab my bag and when I had my bag in my hands I then zoomed right back to my parents. “Are you ready to go?” Mama asks me, still looking tired. “Yeah, I have my bag,” I replied. “Ok, come on, let's go to the car then honey.”

 

We all headed outside to the van. We’ve had the same van for as long as I could remember. It was a deep red van, sort of like an apple. In the trunk, I see a lot of boxes sitting next to some of my mom’s things, all packed away in the van. As I began trotting over to the van, Mama suddenly said, “Honey, you are not riding in the van today, you are going to ride with dad to school today.” This was weird to me. They had always dropped me off to school together. “Come here honey.” So I walked over to mama a little confused. “Honey I want you to know that whatever happens I love you so much.” “I know, I love you mom,” I said back.

 

However, I soon forgot all about this exchange as the thoughts of the excitement I would have telling people in school about my double holiday entered my mind again. I walked over and climbed my way inside of dad’s truck. And we began the journey to school. On the way, I tried asking dad what kind of toys I would get on Christmas. “I have an idea on what I want to get you for my Christmas, but I have no idea what your mom is getting you for hers.” This also confused me. It didn't make sense to me why they both weren't finding me gifts together. When we arrived at school, dad walked me into class which was new to me. Usually dad would just drop me off at the door. I did as he asked, and he went to talk to Ms. Shanon, who is my first grade teacher. I couldn't tell what they were talking about because they were pretty far away, so I just went over to my friends instead. Then dad said “Goodbye buddy, I’ll see you at your baseball game.”

 

Then, he left and went to his job. After we were done learning new vocabulary words, we all got in line to head downstairs for lunch. When we started to line up Ms. Shannon came up to me. “I want you to be the line leader today honey.” I never really liked being the line leader. You can never talk to your friends when you're all the way in the front, so I would never ask to be the line leader. Ms. Shanon saying that I was the line leader confused me. “But wasn't Mike supposed to be the line leader this month?” I asked her. “Well Mike has been the line leader a lot this year so I want you to take over for this week.” So I stood in the front of the line and we all then walked down to the cafeteria.

 

When we got down the hall from the cafeteria, I could hear the voices of the other kids from different classes, and I could smell the lunch for today which was pizza. I forgot today was pizza day, those days are the best lunch days in my opinion, because they let us have ice cream sandwiches as dessert. I took my class to the line for our food and I stood behind the other kids that were already there. When it was my turn in line to grab my food, the lunch lady that we all started calling Bird gave me three ice cream sandwiches. This was odd to me because, in the past, she had yelled at kids for only taking two. When she gave me the sandwiches she had a weird look in her eyes. I never really figured out how to describe it. So it just stuck to the back of my mind. I was really quiet during lunch. Usually I just talk to my friends, but I never really got around to it. I was still replaying the image of Bird in my head over and over again. The ways her eyes look, how sad they were.

 

After school I had a really important baseball game. If we win the game, we advance in our tournament to the semi finals. My teammates and I all met on the bus that would take us all to our game. It was a nice bus, not like the old yellow ones. This bus was blue and even had a bathroom in the back, which soon made the bus smell like the bathroom in school [why- did fellow students use it, if so did one kid need to let out a big one, were the boys just using it for fun?]. When we finally got to our game, we all unloaded the bus, grabbing all our bags and bats. Then we headed for our dugout. During the game I saw mom in the stands cheering us on. In the end, we won our game with a nice gap in scores. After our game was over, I ran over to my mom.

 

“Good job out there today honey, you did so well,” mom said with a big smile on her face. Her eyes still looked the same as they did this morning, but she seemed to have more energy. “Where's dad at mom?” In the stands, I hadn't seen dad with mom, even though he said he was coming to my game. “Sorry honey, but he couldn't make it to the game today.”

 

This made me angry. Dad is often really busy whether it's with work or something else and because of that he is not around as much as I would like him to be. I want him to come to more of my games. I wanted him to. I really wanted him to see me play today, especially since our game was so important and I hit so many home runs. But like usual he wasn't here. “Ready to go home honey?” mom said to me with her car keys in her hand. “Yeah let me just go grab my bag.”

 

We both got in the van and mom started driving us home as the sun set in the distance. In the car I think about how well my day has gone, getting two christmases and winning my baseball game. As soon as I walked into the house, I went right to my room and started playing video games. I didn't get to play yesterday, so I was very excited to play until I had to go eat dinner. I sat down in my chair, but as soon as I turned on my console dad called me. “Hey buddy come downstairs for a second.” So I jumped out of my chair and walked down the stairs to the living room. When I got to the living room, mom was sitting down on the couch again like this morning. Dad was sitting there next to her. “Come sit down hunny,” mom said to me with a sad look on her face. So I walked over to the couch and sat down near both of them. For a second there was an awkward, serene between us all, but then dad started to speak. “Buddy, your mom and I are getting a divorce.” And that was the last thing I could remember before my world became anew.