A True Gift

I still remember the day we decorated the house. I was ten and it was two weeks before Christmas. I remember that I felt like a long journey of waiting and despair will finally come to an end. A new year was about to begin, and all of the bad memories will become the past as they never happened. I was looking forward to my presents. I was about to receive not only the gifts but also the strong feeling of being loved and cared for. Since I'm the youngest in the family, all of the family members would give me a gift one way or another. Sometimes it was a cookie or a hug but it was always there. I was the only center of attention and it was feeling good. 

My uncles usually would ask me what I want before Christmas and that year I knew what I want. It was the spaceship I saw in the ads. I was dreaming of opening a big gift box, and it was there. The thing about gifts is that they are magical even if you know what you'll get. I never want to go to a toy shop with my dad and buy it. I wanted it to magically appear in our home in a gift box. A gift makes you surprised and catches you off guard. That was what I wanted but that year it came in a way that I wasn't expecting. 

It was two weeks before Christmas. Just two weeks. She couldn't wait. My dear mother came to the kitchen to tell my father that it is time. He freaked out for a couple of seconds, and then we went to the hospital. After an hour they told me that I have a sister now. But I didn't want a sister, I wanted a spaceship. The next few days went so fast. No one was caring about me. Everyone was talking about her and I knew that my life is never going to be the same ever again. I wasn't ready to grow up, to be a big brother. But it just happened in an instant.

Christmas came early that year, everyone was calling, visiting, and sending gifts. But all of them were about her. Even my uncles didn't ask me anything about the gift. I accepted that I lost, and she won. I thought I also caused similar attention when I was born but now I was too old.

On the day before Christmas, everyone was in our home. I still remember the people that I love most, talking only about my newborn sister. My family was becoming hers. I want to vanish her like these crazy times never happened. She stole everything I've ever had, my life, and presents and it was feeling like this was never going to change. Thinking about this, I cried to sleep. At night I had a nightmare, shadows were all around me, and I was defenseless and so weak. When I woke up, I run into my parents' bedroom but couldn't wake up my poor parents. They were tired and cuddled like they don't want to wake up for years. But I couldn't control my fear, I was standing near their bed trying not to tremble and cry. In the moments I was attempting to wake up my mother I saw her. She was awake and looking at me with her big eyes in her cradle. 

It was another night I was scared a lot and I was alone again. But this time I wasn't all alone, because she was there. A car's shadow came into the bedroom and I was even more scared then she started crying, and I was not the youngest in the room for the first time. A little, fragile newborn baby was possibly scared more than me. I thought that she must be feeling like what I felt in my dream.

I felt like I should comfort her. I should fight with the shadows, and make sure that they don't hurt her like in my dream. I should be the big brother everyone expected me to be. I forgot that I was also scared and probably more than her. I whispered things I want to hear to her as she cries. But trying to comfort her made me feel stronger. I touched her for the first time. After seconds she stop crying but one more thing also happened, I wasn't scared anymore. I felt like I should be strong and fearless to protect her. But more importantly, I realized that she was the one who protect me eventually.

After the following days, something slowly changed inside me, the feeling of loneliness, was replaced by the responsibility of being an older brother. I wanted to care her for at any cost. I don't remember the gifts that I received this year, even anything about that spaceship, all of a sudden they become meaningless to me. I got the best gift I could ever imagine. Thanks to her, I learned a lot about life, love, and what really matters over the years. Loving someone who needs me prepared me for life. Giving my strength made me stronger, and giving my love made me peaceful that no toy or any kind of material will ever can. Even in the hardest times, I learned how much my parents sacrificed for me. 

I received the feeling of being loved and cared for over that gift, and it was with me when I got bullied, moved to a new place, or scared for the rest of my life. The best parts in me were revealed with her birth and reflected with her laugh.

We don't choose our real gifts in life, they happen in an instant and don't wait for us to be ready, or for Christmas to come but if we choose to accept them, realize them, and protect them at any cost, they become our everything, and the best gift we can ever get.