5:25 am. The blazing sunrise penetrated into the house through the windows and the small holes in the ceiling-less roof. My family ran out of money when we built our house, so we left the rear side of the house open, only covered with the roof. This roof was enough to block any weather except traces of sunlight. Since the temperature in that area was almost constant every day, we didn’t need any insulation system in the house. I was waking up, lying on my bed, staring to the clock on the wall. I watched the dust motes spinning through the traces of sunlight, down to the floor. They were moving beautifully in the morning, like stairways to go up the heaven. I heard the neighbor’s rooster vaguely called, not knowing that the sun was up an hour ago. It happened every day, I think there was a problem with its biological clock.
At this particular time of the day, there were three places in the house that were always occupied: the kitchen, the bathroom, and my sister’s bedroom. My mom always woke up early, took a shower, and went to the kitchen to prepare the breakfast. She is good at cooking. She always knows what to cook. I remember one day she forgot to buy groceries and she had nothing left in the fridge. She then went to the garden, picked some leaves and fresh tomatoes. In half an hour she would serve a delicious veggie dishes and tomato juices for breakfast. To save money, my mom always cooked a large amount of food in the morning. Therefore, we always ate the same menu on the same day, sometimes with different side dish though. We didn’t eat meat and chicken very often, maybe just once or twice a week. They were really expensive and not my favorite. On the other hand, I like eating tofu so much. What is better than a delicious, cheap, and protein-full of tofu? She then prepared herself to go to work as a teacher in the elementary school.
My dad always occupied the bathroom. After he cleaned the backyard, he went to the bathroom and started preparing to go to work. He is a wise man. He is sometimes funny, but most the time he would tell cheesy jokes. My father has been working in a missile company since before I was born. I don’t know for sure whether he likes working there or not. What I know was he didn’t have any other choice to support the family. He never complained about his job yet. He gets out of work around 4 in the evening, just a couple hours before dusk. He then will go outside the house and clean up the lawn. He has a sort of collection of flowers and plants. Some of his flowers do not bloom, just beautiful green leaves that act as petals. He also has a bunch of colorful flowers too. So, even though our house is not pretty in the inside, it is still pretty from the outside. If he is too tired for gardening, otherwise, he usually just sit on the couch and tell some stories about what happened while he was working that day.
Meanwhile in my sister’s bedroom, she was sleeping so well. She would not wake up until 5:31. She became my parents’ favorite child after my brother and I left the house for school and only came back home several times in a year. She is a good companion for my parents in their old days. She is eight years younger than me, and she is just in sixth grade. Without her, our home will be very quiet.
For a few weeks a year, my boarding school would let the students go home. So, I better enjoyed my time at home. Everyone left at 6.30. I was the only one at home. I was busy helping my mom to wash the dishes. I left the house to catch some warm morning sunlight. There were many houses around. They were built up so closely to each other, creating a lack of privacy, but at the same time carrying warmth to the society. Many of my neighbors were unemployed. Some of them owned land and dedicated their life to the land to earn a really low profit. Some of them even didn’t own any land, but worked for the land owner to earn even a lower profit. My father once to me, he was sorry because he could not buy me a beautiful house or a car. What I had at that time was the best he could give. However, he then said that we had to be grateful of the things we have enjoyed every day. He pointed out that many people around us didn’t have enough money even to buy food for dinner, and some students in our neighborhood did not go to high school because their parents could not pay for the tuition fees.
I came back to the kitchen, put back some cooking utensils and seasoning bottles back to their initial place. My mother didn’t have time in the morning to clean up all this mess. She didn’t want to be late because she didn’t want to make her students wait for her. She was really compassionate with her students. She wasn’t only tutoring, but also teaching her students about how to live life. Her passion for the kids eventually affected me as her own son. When I was in fourth grade, my mother was overly concerned about my grades and academic dishonesty. I was terrified to tell my mom if I got a bad grade in school. She forced me to study even if I didn’t want to study. As I grew up I realized that studying was important and I started to study voluntarily. Without all those concerns from her, I would not be the person who I am today. If I were a blooming sunflower in a garden, the soil would be my neighborhood, the minerals would be my mother who taught me the basic of life, and sunlight would be my father who showed me which direction I needed to grow.
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