for my tenth birthday, my grandmother took me shopping and to have dinner.

we purchased a pretty green dress clad with sparkles and a cheap plastic jade necklace.

“you can always take it off,” she told me.

i wore that dress with its little black sweater for Christmas. I loved it.

we continued these birthday dates every year after.

i would always order chocolate cake.

our restaurant. together, year after year.

she’d smile at me over the top of her water glass as i rebelliously ordered soda.

sometimes, alone, in the dark time between consciousness and sleep, i’d somehow begin thinking about if what were to happen if she began to slip away.

and an overwhelming lump formed in my throat.

she understands me and is everything i want to be.

a teacher, a relief worker of Red Cross, a social worker helping kids who have been hurt.

my own mother and my grandmother didn’t get along well, my mother experiencing her parents divorce and her mom remarry after mere months.

my mother, just a kid, was angry.

so angry.

my grandmother responded with a fury of her own, screaming, yelling.

my mother

drinking, smoking, drugs

anything to create a thin stretched band-aid over a gaping wound.

but now, you couldn’t even tell.

now, you wouldn’t even know.

it is only when you flip back through the pages of their story,

to the ripped sentences, past the unreadable words.

the thing is, you don’t know what people don’t share.

you don’t know until they’ve entrusted you with their story if you care enough to read it through- not just from the chapter you’ve stepped in on

but all the way.