Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [49]
C. No one ever said that life was fair.
For example, an argument I had with her when I was eleven:
“I want to go out for the football team,” I said. “There’s a Pop Warner league, and all my friends are playing.”
“It’s your life,” she answered. “But I don’t want to be responsible for you hobbling around on crutches your whole life because you blew out your knee as a kid. And besides, we don’t have the money for it.”
“But I want to.”
“What you want and what you get are usually two entirely different things.”
“That’s not fair. You always say that.”
She shrugged. “No one ever said that life was fair.”
I paused, trying another approach.
“I won’t get hurt, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
She looked me over. “Someone your size? You’d definitely get hurt. I’ve seen football players. You’d be nothing more than a bug on the windshield to them. You’re too small.”
She had a point there. I was small.
“I wish I was bigger. Like my friends are.”
She put a consoling hand on my shoulder. “Oh sweetie, no one ever said life was fair.”
“I know. But still . . .”
“Just remember this, okay?” she’d offer, her voice softening with maternal affection. “It’ll help you later in life when you’re disappointed about anything. What you want and what you get are usually two entirely different things.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should try another sport.”
My mom would smile tenderly, as if finally conceding the argument. “Hey, do what you want. It’s your life.”
The older I got, the more I hated these arguments, because I lost every one of them. But still, deep down, I could never escape the feeling that my mom was probably right about most things. After all, she spoke from experience.
CHAPTER 9
Easter Island, Chile
January 29–30
As we looked out the airplane window, Easter Island slowly came into view, a remote and exotic sight that only underscored how far from familiar surroundings we were.
Easter Island, like most islands in the South Pacific, was first settled by Polynesians. But because Easter Island was so far from the rest of populated Polynesia—nearly 2,200 miles from the coast of Chile, it’s the remotest inhabited island in the world—the native people developed their own unique culture, which included the carving of giant statues known as the Moai.
Of all the places listed in the original brochure, Easter Island had been the most intriguing to me. I’d read about the Moai and had longed to see and touch them ever since I was a child. Because it was so remote, I fully realized that this trip might be the only time I ever set foot on the island, and I craned my neck, looking out the window as we circled in preparation for landing.
What struck me immediately was the scarcity of trees. I suppose I’d imagined the palms and rain forests typical throughout the South Pacific, but instead the island was largely covered with grassy meadows, as if part of Kansas had been dropped into the middle of the ocean. Later, we’d find out from the archaeologists that the absence of trees partially explains the cultural history of Easter Island, but at the time I remember thinking how odd it seemed.
Another interesting thing about Easter Island is the time zone in which it is located. Because we were flying west, we would cross time zones and lose a day on our way to Australia, but it enabled us to maximize our days. If we left at ten, for instance, and flew for five hours, we might arrive only three hours after we departed, as measured by local time. But because the island is part of Chile and thus shares the Eastern Time Zone (along with New York and Miami, despite lying geographically west of California), we were told that the sun wouldn’t set until 10:45 P.M.
Dinner was served outdoors, and afterward, a few of the tour members strolled over to a seaside bluff to watch the sun go down. Waves crashed violently against the rocks, the plumes rising forty to fifty feet in the air. In the west, the sky turned pink and orange, before finally changing into the brightest red I’ve ever seen. And then an impenetrable darkness