Do you ever wonder what that memory, that distant memory, so far away, somehow memorable, is? Something forever in you, the earliest memory, so vague, so far, but in your heart. This memory could be your worst, something that affected your life so much that you still remember it. It may be just a memory. That’s what I thought of mine, just a memory. A sweet surprise, very basic, very simple. I come to understand that memories are not that simple. Something stuck in you can’t be simple, nothing in life is. Everyone’s memories have different meanings, true different meanings. Well for me this is it, this is my true meaning of something that was supposed to be simple, was supposed to be sweet. 
My cousins wake me up with wide smiles on their faces, forcing poor me to get up. I can’t, sleep is too persistent (that hasn’t changed to this day). I still argue for more minutes, but they aren’t that generous. Doing my little Tarzan move by jumping off my crib, all grumpy (like always), on the verge of crying but mostly confused. Why are the smiles so big; they start in the middle of each cheek. Is this a joke?  
This is torture! Noise coming out of the living room. All the other doors closed. They were never like that because it would get too hot if they were. On the ground; little red thingies. What are these reflective stripes? 
Three steps, a little run, two steps, a faster run. Why are we walking this fast? My cousins are just being rude and annoying. I just woke up! Wait until I tell my mom! 
Four steps, run, run, two steps. This is getting really, really, I don’t know. Is this anger? Looking in their faces for the same feeling. Scanning; checking every feature. Their foreheads have tension and little wrinkles. And the cheeks! What is wrong with them? The cheeks are all puffy and wrinkled and…the smile, it has grown bigger! Whatever I felt earlier, 2 seconds ago, flew out of the window and went with the wind. I feel excited, confused, but excited. What if Hello Kitty is sitting next door? I have so much to tell her; about my new Hello Kitty bag, and… 
“Are you ready?” Elga, the oldest cousin, asks with a celebratory cry. 
“I,” but I can’t finish. 
The door opens, always cracking, always waking me up. The beige round ceiling, balloons hanging from it, yellow, white; some string attached at the end of them. 
“Surprise!”-my lovely mother says with that…that sunshine smile. 
The table we always use for eating New Year’s Eve, right there, filled with plastic Hello Kitty plates. Hello Kitty balloons, on the ground, on the rough couches I sit watching TV for hours. And a cake in the middle of the long rectangular table. A normal cake, not that pretty, not one princess on it. A number three candle in the middle of it and it’s pink! And oh, my mother, her lovely eyes. The warmest, safest shade of brown but they look different today. Almost reflective. Tears! Are they mine or hers? 
I realize my mouth has been open the whole time, so when I close it my spiral curls, messy from waking up, are all in my mouth. I take them out as fast as I can, and then I look at her. So very safe her arms looked, open for me like they would never close. So very proud her tears wash down her face. So very filled with love, with pain, two opposites that in her, and only in her soul, look perfectly fine together. And I can’t help but wonder, as I run into her arms, would she ever leave? Would she go, away, where I can’t hug her? Where I can’t annoy her by playing with her hair? Would she hug me every day of my life, even when I did bad things? Would she open her arms to me even if I didn’t want them? Would she love me until the end of the days? No, no, no, my beautiful, angelic mother would go, just like my uncle did. She would leave me all alone, all stranded. Someday she would give me that last warm hug. And then what? I need my mommy! 
Tears, like a river came running down my face, make them go! They wouldn’t listen. My arms hug her back close, my fingers somehow finding each other. She’s crying too, my favorite sleeping shirt is all wet. But she stops. Everything stops in her eyes. She smiles; she makes my tears go. Her eyes tell me she would never go, and I believe her. 
I have told this story so many times. To myself, my family, and my mom but I never told her why I cried. I always tell her that I was so stunned, so stunned that I cried. That could be part of it, that was it for a while, I couldn’t admit it to myself. 
  I remember when I was younger, I would cry before going to sleep. I would say that I was scared my parents were going to die. My sister would play with my hair and tell me there was some type of medicine that made them immortal. I believed her voice and her eyes, after all, I was a kid. This story would repeat itself, over and over again; I wouldn’t notice it. Until my last birthday. I turned 14, and right on the twelve dot, I started crying, suddenly I realized, I was crying of the scare of losing them. My mom and my dad were my whole world for fourteen years; in four years I’ll go to university. They won’t be my world anymore and my birthday reminds me that every year. I will grow old, but they will grow older and get comfortable in death's bitter arms. I got a flashback of my third birthday, that’s why I cried that day too.  
Later that night, on my fourteenth birthday, my mom hugged me. She looked a different shape from my vague memory of 11 years ago, but her eyes were the same. And then they caught my eyes, and told me once more, that she would never go.