dreams- one chance

Most books have happily ever after endings. Most books just
wrap up the whole story making us happy, yet much easier for us to forget them.
Then there are those special ones that don’t end the way we want them to end. They
leave us fighting with the author about it, yet they leave us thinking.

In a book I read, called “Seventeenth summer” by Maureen Daly, Angie
falls in love with jack in the summer. She has to go to college in Chicago and
Jack has to go to Oklahoma by the end of summer.

Through the beginning of the book everything seemed great, but as it got
near the end of summer, I started thinking for and fighting with Angie. I wouldn’t
let her think about going to college and leaving Jack. I wanted her to leave everything
for her first love because it seemed as if she would have been happy for the rest
of her life with him.

Yet, before I read this book, I told my mother that no man will make me
give up college. That made her happy since she gave up college herself for my
father. She has lost an experience that she can no longer get, but she gives me
a chance to enjoy what she never did.

Angie too, promised her mother she would go to college. I think that’s
why she didn’t leave the idea. Also, maybe the love she felt was not strong enough.
It may have looked strong enough to me, yet it might have differed for her.

At first the ending made me angry for a whole week. I didn’t believe
Angie made the right choice. But, after thinking it over, I knew that she had not
made the wrong choice. She had made herself happy by going for her dreams. Dreams
that do not give a second chance and love always have second chances. She had
made her parents happy as well.

The books that end with no “happily ever after” can be more negative but actually
teach more about life. In life, we have to give up something for something
else. There’s always death and violence in between. And I believe it’s good for
teens to start learning that life won’t be easy. Life isn’t easy.

parents make mistakes too

I never thought we, the teenagers, would learn from our
parents mistakes. Not the mistakes they did in the past and tell us to not
follow, but the mistakes they are making now. In fact, it never occurred to me
that there will be a time when we will stop trying to be as beautiful, mature
and high spirited as our parents are.

In Ms.Robbins book club I read What I Saw And How I Lied by
Judy Blundell. Evie and her parents moved to Florida after her father returned
from World War 2. Evie meets Peter, who served for her father’s company in the
war, and falls for him.

Evie feels like her mother is the intruder in her
relationship with peter. But then she finds out that she herself was the
intruder.

Evie’s mother did not just make a mistake that only affected
her and her marriage but it affected her daughter. Without knowing it, she was
hurting her daughter and I don’t think those were her intentions. She created a
problem on herself but made it everyone’s problem.

I guess that’s wrong with mistakes. They hurt not just you
but everyone around you. They are things that can be stopped with just a little
will and push, but ones we do them we have no control over them anymore. Because
ones we create the mistake we cannot go back and stop them from happening.

At first Evie wanted to be just as beautiful as her mother. Her
mother was perfect in Evie’s eyes. She tried everything. She tried to be
mature, wear nice dresses, and put on makeup. She tried to have a man and be
fun, but it got her nowhere. Instead she found out that her “seems as perfect”
mother was less beautiful than she could imagine.

My mother always tells me to not do the same mistakes she
did in the past. Like become pregnant in my teens, choosing not to go to
college even though I have the opportunity etc. I know she was not perfect back
then, but I never thought that she was not perfect now.  When I asked her what mistakes she has had in
the last year, she did not hide them. Instead, she told me straightforward that
she had done many mistakes in her friendships, job and even in her marriage.

I understood that we all are still like kids no matter how
old we are. All, parents and children’s, make mistakes everyday and learn from
them. I will still be making mistakes in 30 years but not the same ones. They
will be different because we learn from our mistakes.