The one about family.

I floated up the stairs on cloud nine last night when I got home from Ryan's. I gracefully stepped down when I reached the open french doors to my bedroom, and the cloud floated away to return to its home in the sky. It was dark, so I turned on a lamp for some immediate light. That's when I spotted two coral colored roses sticking out of an Our Lady of Guadalupe candle holder. Seeing the holder reminded me of a few weeks earlier when our electricity was out. Suddenly I was thankful for the lamp I just turned on.

My mind shifted from the make-shift vase after a moment, and I wondered who would put flowers in my bedroom. The only person who ever did that was my dad. We never had a lot of money, so he would do random little things for me and my mom, usually as a way to say, "I'm sorry", because he was never good with words. Then it dawned on me who left the flowers.

It was my little brother.

I sat down on my bed and started thinking about the conversation I had earlier with Ryan. The one about family. He spent a good thirty minutes naming all of the members of his family. I lost count of how many there were after ten people.

"How about you Liz? What's your family like?" he asked me.

"Well...I told you about Adam...and my mom...and my brothers...That's it", I replied.

Regardless of how big or small my family is, our love is tremendous. Its kept us alive and gotten us this far. I had to forgive my little brother and move on from it. How else could I expect him to move forward if I couldn't do the same? Family is the most important thing to me but in the past few days I certainly wasn't acting like it.

I'm terrible with numbers, but I know one thing for sure. The equation of being here wouldn't make any sense without my little brother.

I sighed and smelled the roses.