Everything seemed normal

I'm sitting in the big easy chair. The chair I always sit in. When my mother comes home, she says goodbye and puts away the groceries. She calls from the kitchen that we're having spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tonight. Spaghetti and meatballs are my favorite food. I hear the kettle on. My mother always puts it on, and then we have a cup of tea together before the rest of us come home. My family consists of my mother, father, brother, younger sister, and me.

My father works a lot, and we really only see him on weekends.

That's because he wants to give us a good life, my mother always says. My mother works part-time in a gift shop on the canal. I think she enjoys that. My brother, younger sisters, and I are all in school. My brother is studying to be an construction engineering at a university, and I'm for studying animal care. My younger sister is still in primary school.

We all have our own lives, really. My brother plays basketball, and when he's not practicing, you can find him playing drums in a band. I play hockey and draw a lot, and my younger sister takes ballet. It's pretty busy for my mom. My dad tries to help out on weekends, but he's often tired too.

We used to go away for weekends often. My parents even had a little house in the middle of the woods. I remember loving it there. I was always climbing trees and looking for beautiful leaves, chestnuts, acorns, just about anything. My brother was always building treehouses.
In the summer, we always went swimming in a lake near the house. Unfortunately, my parents had to sell the house because their busy lives meant they no longer had time to go there.