Silver Spoon

O n the outside I have it all. The youngest child of rich parents I’ve always gotten everything I ever wanted handed to me on a silver platter. Add good looks brains and popularity to the mix and it’s not hard to wonder why people say I have the perfect life. But all that glitters isn’t gold. You never know what’s going on behind the façade of people’s “perfect” lives. Experience has taught me that the hard way. But let me start at the beginning of my story.

For a while I had known something was wrong. For a few months already my mother hadn’t been feeling herself. Then she took a turn for the worse. I heard the hushed conversations behind closed doors knew she was seeing doctors and doing tests even though nobody actively shared that information with me. Although I’m 16 to my parents and siblings I’ll always be the baby of the family. They couldn’t hide it from me forever though and once they had definite results they finally shared the news with me confirming what I already felt in my heart. My mother was ill. Seriously ill with the dreaded illness.

The doctors gave my mother a 50 percent chance for recovery but my parents were determined to fight it — and win. They did their research and found that the best place to treat my mother’s particular illness was in New York. So the decision was made. For the next couple of months New York would be their home. My father actually has a branch of his business in New York so they had a perfectly legitimate cover-up story. Except for the rest of my siblings and a few close relatives they didn’t want anyone else to know the true reasons for their travels.

As my two older brothers were both studying abroad in yeshivah it was only me that was a problem. To leave me or to take me. In the end my parents left the choice up to me; I could stay put in Los Angeles and move in with my sister who lived just a few streets away or come with them to New York. I declined the first offer. My sister is very sweet and all but as the oldest sibling of the family she feels it’s her duty to be my second mother.