Silver Lining

In my life, I have never really had a constant object to keep near me as a security blanket - any objects I held in reverence have long since been tossed into the trash by my father without a second glance, along with many other valuable (memories-wise) items belonging to my brother and mom.

However, there is one item that sits, even now, on the topmost shelf of my dresser, that was gifted to me when I was thirteen, probably the worst age of my life. Around the neck of a tye-dyed purple Beanie Baby is a small, tarnished gold cross, it's white and red gems half-missing as it sits quietly surveying the bric-a-brac that clutters my room.

I don't remember exactly when it was given to me - I think it was right before Christmas Eve, immediately before my mom and I recieved our flu shots. That night, both my mother and I became ill, purportedly after-effects the flu shots, though my mother was the only one feeling better the next morning. I quickly became less and less willing to eat, and had little to no energy to move from our couch in the living room. By the time my father's Office Christmas Party rolled around, I was lethargic and could do little more than sleep all day. After a few hours, my mother called home to check on me, and immediately ran home, sensing something was wrong. The next morning, I was hauled out to the hospital, crying with the effort of walking, and was immediately admitted with pnemonia. As they prepared a room for me, I remember pulling the cross from my neck and handing it to my mother for safe-keeping. Somehow it ended back on my neck, where it stayed for the next seemingly endless week as I struggled to breathe and, at one point, completely stopped eating. My mother stayed with me the entire time, refusing to go home to sleep and literally holding me up as I was forced to walk around the halls to help my lungs. By the time I finally regained my appetite, half the gems in the cross were gone, having been worn out and off by my continued tossing and turning as I lay in the hospital.

As soon as I got home, the cross was taken off and disappeared for a long while - it wasn't until I moved back to Lincoln from Illinois with my mother and brother that I found it again, packed in with a going-away Beanie presented to me from one of my only true friends from the hell-hole of a Catholic school I'd attended in Illinois. I carefully wrapped the necklace around the Beanie's neck, and it has stayed there for the last almost six years, a constant reminder that no matter how hopeless and miserable I feel, there is always a way through - everything will be alright in the end, even if I have to endure a period of misery before the 'silver lining'.

Thanks, mom and Mary-Beth.