Sunny Memories

I sat on my bed with the opened notebook, almost dumbfounded.

There's no way the lock opened so easily. The number wasn't even one of our birthdays. Maybe it was one of mom's grandparent's birthdays.

Eager to invade my mom's privacy, I flipped through the first few empty pages until I was stopped by a huge drawing of a sunflower with a cheeky smile. A jumbled and poorly designed signature confirmed my mom being the artist behind it.

I smiled turning to the next few pages of equally cheeky looking flowers and other miscellaneous drawings that consisted of elephants, a cupboard with a chimney and some face less dolls, which if I stop to think about it, were kind of creepy. My mom was undoubtedly weird from a young age and I was more than fine with that.

After going through the drawings, I finally came to dated pages with writings. I did a quick mental math and according to the lousy calculation my mom was probably a bit less than 10 years around that time.

I read through Mom's messy and horribly spelled description of holding her first lemonade stand in the backyard of this house during a summer holiday. How her Grandpa came in intervals posing as different customers. He probably did that because of the scarcity of potential customers aside from great grandma, as Crystalwood Estate didn't really have neighboring houses.

Still she proudly stated how she figured out that it was him each time, as she was the only one among all the tiny 8 year olds who held the honor of getting two star stickers on her homework. In her own words, "I am samrt".

My mom had often told me that her grandparents were one of the kindest and most endearing people she had the pleasure of knowing. She had never known of her parents and they filled that gap and more. Reading through her unconstructive yet adoring writings confirmed that description.

After finishing through my mom's first and successful step into the business world, I flipped forward as more dated entries came. I patiently read through all of them, not minding the smile that made home on my face.

Reading them helped the mental image of young Miss Avery become clearer. And the best way to describe my mom would be- 'an adorable pesky brat'

Yes, I called my mom that. Deal with it.

She was this 24/7 sugar high brat who refused to be like normal mortals, whom she- mind you, 'dearly loved despite their grumpyness'. She greeted anyone and everyone on the streets, as politeness is a virtue for a noble lady, her words not mine.

She lived in her own cloud of delusions. She for one, firmly believed that the town couldn't survive with her gone. And she turned that into an excuse so her grandparents wouldn't take her on plane trips. I know for a fact that mom had been afraid of planes since her childhood, so lil Linnea can't fool me with her lies.

If being delusional wasn't enough, my mom often times bullied people with her intimidating and unasked kindness. She was oblivious to the fact, that the local ice cream parlors owner's son was just annoyed with her, and it was not the- 'sorry excuse of Christmas ornaments' souring his holiday spirit. And thus, she had the brilliant idea of fixing that by painting over the poor tree.

The only way I can imagine her escaping the owners wrath was because she was adorable. It's universally acknowledged that cute things tend to survive better in this harsh ruthless world. That explains why the last 6/7 years of my life sucked. Darn puberty had me barely scraping.

Slowly the writings became infrequent but she still wrote random lines, grocery lists or song names. Her sunflower obsession didn't seem to reduce, which is commendable as my likes dislikes changed like my English teacher's choice of a favorite student.

Then after few pages the dated entries made a return, but a some years after. She was still the hyper catastrophe as ever at the age of 12/13. She talked about making some journal for special uses, but there was no update after that .

Among the pages, I found a small faded Polaroid.

Flipping it over, I snorted as my mother with sunflower embellished sunglasses came into view. She had the most dead serious face and a really beautiful girl about the same age was laughing, wearing a pretty flower wreath.

Behind them, a flower shop and a cotton candy vendor could be seen. It was probably during Merryview summer festival, this town's oldest tradition. If nothing went wrong I might be able to see one this year.

I looked down and underneath the picture, my mom wrote –

I tried to remember if I knew any of my mom's friend by that name, but no one came to mind. Yet, the girl looked very familiar. There was a good possibility that I had forgotten about it even if I met her before.

Zooming through the pages, I halted my reading spree when my eyes fell on my dad's name beside a very suspicious looking bald snowman, which was shown with an arrow to his name.

Well that's interesting

Neither of my parents had really explained how they met except for the fact that they were childhood friends. Thus only now, it came into my knowledge that the first time she met dad, was in the middle of the forest she frequented.

This chubby crying boy, who had a horrible buzz cut and a temper shorter than his hair length . He had gotten lost while being on a protest run-away from home, because his parents brought him along to this godforsaken boring town without his approval. My mom sounded sincerely annoyed with him, as she had to put up with his whining and complaining all the way to his house. She said she didn't appreciate bald annoying snowman in the middle of summer anyways, and on top of that this one was snobbish.

My dad came up multiple times after that. Mom mostly seemed frustrated with his antics, but that slowly changed. 

She went from complaining about his grumpy, whiny nature to showing him around the town and slowly laughing at his remarks. 2 years later, dad left town for his hometown as his parents transferred again.

That day, I could tell my mom cried a lot. Her anxiousness flowed from her words. She became scared he'd forget about her with new friends; worse have no new friends at all.

But none of that happened. One year later, during summer vacation, dad came back to visit her. My mom was both surprised and nervous as he hadn't contacted her that much throughout that period of time (jerk)

She joked how dad wasn't fed well in the city and lost all his baby fat. Dad had picked on track and field in his new school and grew his hair a bit too long. People thought it was part of weird teenage antic as he looked like a walking mop. Mom was persistent that his new sports friends were influences behind his hair style, but it was probably her fear of being replaced by better friends.

Dad didn't talk to her much throughout the summer, which made the fear grow stronger. And that resulted into a heated argument that broke out during the week of summer festival.

And after that, mom left the fairground without telling anyone.

Yet still, somehow he still found her. Looking like a sorry mop, he sat beside mom on the wooden stairway in the middle of the forest, where they had first met.

He apologized

And finally, told her he loved her.

It was both embarrassing and nice to read about how my dad actually managed to ask mom out. He cried once she actually said yes, 'cause he was completely ready for a rejection. But before that, he got trashed by mom for ignoring her.

Turns out, He was super nervous the whole summer vacation and kept on panicking every time he met her. And funny enough, it wasn't the track and field team influencing him, it was she herself.

Dad tried changing everything mom had teased him about when they were kids. But it was never truly needed, as she never minded them.

I smiled looking over the small snowman doodles at the bottom wearing sunflower wreaths. My mom sounded all over the place, which is understandable. My eyes fell on the date written in a corner. At first it didn't seem much, but then I looked once, twice and even thrice when it finally dawned on me. I smiled, then grinned and finally fell into a roll of laughter. I kept laughing and laughing, and when Ms. Iris knocked on the door I could barely compose myself.

I told her to come in and she peeked in with a raised eyebrow. 

"What's so funny" she said, closing the door behind her

"You know how mom always boasted about being the less cheesy one among the two of them?" I said still giggling

"Between her and Evan?"

"Yeah"

"What about it?"

"Guess what the pass for notebook was?"

"Your dad's birthday?"

" Nope, it's the date of the day when dad asked mom out"

"Oh my oh my" She snickered, "Teenage corny Linnea for the win"

Soon she joined me on the bed, hovering over the notebook. We went through the remaining pages, making remarks and listening to small stories of the time she saw of them. Hours passed with talking, laying down horizontally on the bed. But as the night grew, she dragged me downstairs for dinner.

We ate our individual servings of pasta as she went on complaining about how Alice sent back a chapter from her manuscript for lacking reasoning and she has no idea how to fix it. She was explaining the scene to me when she stopped mid sentence. I Curiously raised my eyebrow and she smiled.

"Wanna visit the forest tomorrow Leah?"

Hearing this I immediately swallowed the food in my mouth

"The forest mom used to go to?" I spluttered out, almost chocking

"Jeez, chew properly Leah. And yes, there's a forest trail I want to show you. I can't show you the whole area though" she said passing me water. "Wanna go tomorrow early morning?"

I aggressively nodded and she laughed.

After dinner, I headed back for my room and paused on my track. I stopped in front of the picture with my parents at the festival that I had seen when I first came. I brought my face close to the frame looking over my mom's grinning face and dad's annoyed expression, with a small smile tugging at his face. The date underneath the picture was one day after he asked her out.

Shortly after mom passed away and dad finally collected himself from the mess he had become, he started avoiding talking about her. It came to a point when he'd get upset if she simply got brought up. If any questions about her or me and the things I had different from others came, he's get annoyed. I was mad at him, even hated him thinking he just disliked both me and mom.

But knowing more about them started to make me think, he doesn't hate mom or me. He's afraid, because he never made peace with the pain; which I did. That's why it was easier for me to remember her without hurting so much, because I let myself be vulnerable properly.

It's true that pain demands to be felt, the more you run away the longer it will hurt. Because of that, he's missing out on remembering all the good memories because he's running from the hurtful ones.

I want him to remember the warmth I felt reading their memories, which I never got to see. The warm fuzzy feeling that stings just a little bit. Even Though I hope that he would hold my hand when I felt scared, but is seems like it's time for me to fulfill that part.

I moved from my spot, stepping up.

I hope tomorrow will be a good day.

Chapter 3 end.

A/N: 

Hi there

not dead and back for some more weird stuff

 A long ass chapter where not much happens, now that's what I call balance :D 

(idk why i dislike this chapter so much :)

well have a good day, thanks for reading, ily thissss much. Shine the little star to brighten up my day <3

till next update, toodles

~Colour

icon: <a>Freepik</a> from <a> www.flaticon.com</a>"