Journey- From One Side to Another
1
Home
Family: Your blood. The closest people you ever love, value, protect, and hate. It may not be the same to others, but to me, family is everything. Most of my entire world is centered around them. One of them is my mother, a strict teacher, but a friend I can console in. The next person is my brother, someone I have to watch with four eyes. No one can replace his position. Through all of our disagreements, we still have tons of good laughs.
I honestly didn’t know how to react when I first saw my house, a fenced apartment building stuck in between an alley and a quiet neighborhood. It seemed so huge then, with brick walls and a tan colored roof. At my first glance the apartment building seemed kind of evil, giving off a strange aura I’ve never felt before… it was almost kind of intimidating. Though being the newest thing on the block, I remember my mother bringing my younger brother and I to check on its construction around every few weeks.
“This is going be your new house.” She beamed at her own words.
I was a kid then, so I stared at it with raised eyebrows in awe, marveling its thin paperback windows. “Okay, but what are we going do when it starts snowing? And where is my room?” my younger brother asked, scratching his chest.
At the time we were living in the Robert Taylor projects on the south side of Chicago. I don’t remember much about those early days, except riding my big wheel down the narrow stretch of pavement. And people were always running from the police. I asked my mother what they were doing and she said: “Boy, whenever you see those people running, you run too.”
It took almost half a week to finally settle in. Our apartment was huge at the time; a spacey kitchen and living room, two full flights of stairs, two bathrooms (that was real cool to me), and three big ass bedrooms (I remember being mad that day because I had to share a room with my brother while my mom got the biggest room in the entire house)! The neighborhood was relaxing; a definite improvement from all the gunshots and sirens echoing in the shadows.
“Hopefully we won’t have to move again.” Mother sighed.
Little did we know how fast she would eat those words.
