Family Matters

When I was younger, I thought I had the perfect family. Two loving parents and a beautiful little sister. My parents owned a successful chocolate shoppe in town, and we had a normal house in a normal neighborhood and even though my parents argued sometimes and I fought with my sister, Chocolate Caramel, a sometimes, that was normal, right? Normal. Normal was good and safe. Normal was perfect.

My life stopped being normal when my dad left us. I didn't know why, and if my mom did she didn't let on. Had they fought too much? Was it my fault, or Caramel's? I didn't know. And I would never know, because I would never see him again. I wish I had hugged him one more time before he left, just to bury my face in his warm cream-colored coat and inhale the scent of chocolate and peanuts and dad, and to tell him I loved him and to hear it back, but I didn't.

He was just gone.

After he left, my mother wasn't the same. She acted like she was fine. "We don't need him," she would tell us. "We'll be fine, just us girls. Just give it time, and you guys won't even miss him." But I knew better. She missed him as much as we did, I could tell in the way her hooves shook doing everyday tasks, and by how her eyes seemed watery and fragile even when she was smiling, and by the way her face looked like it had aged beyond her years.

My mother was a beautiful mare, alright. Her coat was light brown, like mine, and she had gorgeous black curls. Usually her eyes shone a beautiful luminous gold, but after a long day it seemed the shine in them left, leaving a mustard-ish yellow. I used to wish I looked like her, so elegant without even trying, but she seemed to get so exhausted and scatterbrained increasingly often. Mustard triumphed over gold more than a few times after dad left. Caramel and I took to playing together as quietly as possible to keep from bothering her.

My sister was always fun to play with. She was two years younger than me, but other ponies said Caramel and I looked like twins. Our manes were similar, except that her curls were chestnut and blond while mine were chestnut and dark pink. I supposed we carried ourselves similarly, but other than those things I couldn't really see the resemblance. Her coat was the milky color of our father's; Her eyes gold like mom's. She always seemed to be smiling and laughing, and she always wanted to be just like me, which was a trait I found adorable if annoying at times.

The second Not Normal Day was about a year after the first Not Normal Day, a few days before the Summer Sun Celebration. It was scorching hot, the sun seemingly suspended in the cloudless sky, and the air was heavy with smells of honeysuckle and ice cream and ponies anxious to get anywhere that could stifle the heat. Mom decided to take me and Caramel to the neighborhood pool, which was jam-packed with ponies splashing around, diving off the diving boards, and playing those kinds of games that were only fun when you were in the pool. This year, I had decided that I was much too old for water wings, so of course Caramel decided that she was, too. Our mom tried to get her into some, but she adamantly refused.

"I'll be right by Chocolate Cherry, and she's a great swimmer! I'll be fine," she promised mom. My chest puffed out with pride at her claim that I was a great swimmer.

"Yeah, mom," I agreed, slinging an arm around my little sister and pulling her in close. "We'll keep each other safe."

We swam and splashed and played for hours, getting out of the pool only for adult swim, sticking to each other like glue. It was only once I let her out of my sight.

"I gotta go to the bathroom," I informed her, beginning to pull her through the water to the steps. She tugged her hoof out of my grasp.

"Can I stay?" she asked, giving me big sad eyes. I wanted to say no, but it was a hot day, and the water was the perfect temperature, and I didn't want to get out, even for as short a trip as it was to go to the bathroom. So against my better judgement, I let her stay.

I was washing my hooves when I heard it. Or rather, I didn't hear it. What I wasn't hearing was the noise of ponies talking and splashing and squealing. Instead, all I heard was hushed murmurs... And then, a horrified wail. I came running out of the restrooms and saw everypony gathered into a large circle. I ran straight for it and used my small size to squeeze between the forest of legs. When I finally broke through, I wished I hadn't.

Chocolate Caramel's limp form was laying on the cement surrounding the pool as the lifeguard repeatedly pumped her chest and attempted to blow air into her lungs. The wailing was coming from my mother. I should have taken her with me, I should have taken her with me... The words repeated over and over in my head like a mantra as my stomach sank to my hooves. After two long minutes, the lifeguard stood up, looked towards my mother, and shook his head. Her sobbing increased to nearly a scream as she threw herself towards my sister's body. She hugged the small limp form to her, petting Caramel's wet mane and patting her back, like she did when burped her as a baby. It didn't work.

A messenger had been sent to get an ambulance as soon as it had been discovered Caramel was drowning. There were so many ponies packed into the pool no one had even noticed she had been struggling until she was sinking towards the bottom.

I missed her like I had never missed anything before. She was my closest friend, my baby sister. I cried a lot over her, blaming myself for what had happened. I never saw mom cry after that first day, she just walked around with her eyes fixed to some point in the distance I had a feeling wasn't really here, like she was visiting another time and place and trying her hardest to get there. I wanted to go where she was too, but I also wanted her to stay with me in the real world.

But the real world is a hard place. It's especially hard when you come home from school and there are police cars and an ambulance outside your house. It's especially hard when a police officer tells you that your mother is in a better place now and that you were going to have to go to a home where hopefully you would find a great new family. It's especially hard when you realize all of your family is gone and you didn't get to say goodbye to a single one of them.

No more gold or mustard. No more cream-colored hugs. No more doting copycats. It was just me.

***

It had been a month at the foster home and I had mastered my mother's art of going somewhere far away. I tried my best to come back to the real world when potential families came by, but they would look at me with a slightly concerned expression and breeze right past. Most days I was too busy in my best memories to care-a picnic dad had surprised us all with on a sunny spring afternoon, or a trip to the carnival on my 6th birthday. Some days, though, I was grounded enough that the rejection stung.

One day, a pair of pegasi walked into the home-a turquoise mare with a blond mane and a grey stallion with a messy black one. The turquoise mare and I locked eyes and just like that, she trotted over to me as if I was the most important thing in the world at that moment. She leaned down to get on my eye level. Her expression was concerned, like all the other adopters, but there was something different in her gaze. A shared sadness...Not pity, I realized, but sympathy. And a sort of warmth in her eyes that brought me a little bit back to reality, I think. Then suddenly, she grinned. She turned to the grey stallion who had caught up with her, her wings extended in her excitement. Her cutie mark was a single honeysuckle flower. I think I like honeysuckle, drifted vaguely through my mind.

"This is the one. I can tell she's a good one," she told the stallion. He smiled, but he seemed a little worried.

"Are you sure?" he inquired. "This is our first time adopting, and you haven't seen any of the other foals." There goes another one... But no, the mare was shaking her head.

"I don't need to see the other foals. I can tell. She's the one." She looked back to me, leaning down again so I was once again staring into those teal orbs. "What's your name, hon?"

"Chocolate Cherry."

"Well, Chocolate Cherry, how would you feel about coming home with us?"

For the first time in a month, I smiled. "I would like that very much."

When I was younger, I thought I had the perfect family. And my old family was a great family, a family that will live inside my heart always. But I know better now. Normal isn't perfect. No matter how tough things get, my new family is tougher. They don't leave each other or go somewhere else when things get bad. My new family may not be normal, but do you know what it is?

Perfect.