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Without

   The little girl shrieked with delight as her Dad's Ford pick-up truck pulled up.
    "He's here. He's here!" She yelled to her mom.
    "Okay Emily, I'll be right up," came her mother's calm response from the laundry room.
    Emily was so excited that she was almost bursting with joy. She grabbed the white box that held her precious skates. She couldn't wait to see the ice speeding beneath her feet.
    Her mom walked into the room. "Are you ready to skate?" She asked, already knowing the answer. Emily was hopping up and down with excitment.
    "Yes, yes! Let's go, let's go!" She ran to the locked door and tried to tug it open, putting the box on the floor.
    "No Emily, you need to put your snowsuit on first," her mom said as she held it out to her. Emily pulled it on and her mom zippered it up.
    She heard her father's booming footsteps coming up from the basement. She ran over to the basement door and opened it.
    "Are you ready to go out to the pond?" he asked, the question directed to both his wife and daughter. "I left the truck running."
    "I just need to pull on my snow pants."
    "And I need to get my skates," Emily replied running to the piano stool, where her mother had placed the box. Once again, she picked up the box holding her skates. She skipped back to her father hardly believing that she was going skating without her sisters.
    Her mom finally came back and they went down to the truck together. The truck plowed through the snow that had drifted into the dirt road. Emily watched the trees fly by as they entered into the forest.
    "Finally," she thought aloud. "We're there!" They had pulled up to a beautiful pond. The gleaming ice had already been cleared of snow by the wind they'd had the day before. Emily jumped out of the truck and ran over to the bench they had set up, weeks before. her mom walked over and helped her put on her skates. Emily shakily rose to her feet and started skating.
    By the time both her parents started skating, she had done a few laps around the pond. Emily laughed as she tripped and fell into the snow surrounding the pond. This was how it was supposed to be. When she went skating with her sisters, they pushed her around, and skated circles around her. She got back up and slid onto the ice.

    When she finally got home, Emily felt a rush of satisfaction. She had finally skated without her sisters.

You never really know how much you care about things, until they are gone for good.

What am I going to do if I find a background that this red doesn't show up on? *sigh* What a depressing day that'll be. I wrote this story for English *grumble* last year. My mother read it right after she read one of my stories where some characters die. She was maybe a paragraph into it and said "so when is the little girl going to die?" She said it sort of smirkily cuz I don't think she liked that the character in the other story was a mother. So I said, "She doesn't. She lives forever after, in a cute little house." *smirks* The kids always live lol. MY STORIES! *cuddles* Copyrighted 2003 by Faith Andrews (KS)