Once upon a time there was a single mom and her daughter. They lived in an apartment in the city, and they didn’t have a lot of money. The daughter’s appearance was conservative: she was always clean, she wore clothes that didn’t reveal herself, and she was a straight A student. The mom had a drinking problem, which is where she spent most of the money. She was also sloppy and was never home for her daughter. The little girl was always by herself, and she was always cooking and cleaning for herself. She was never happy, she never had time to have fun, and she didn’t have any friends.

Then one day the mom’s drinking problem got worse, and the little girl was taken away from her mom. She went to go live with her grandma in the country. The grandma was in her sixties; she was the total opposite of her daughter. While the girl was with the grandma, the mom went to classes so she could get better. After a few years the mom got herself cleaned up, got a job as a cashier in a grocery store, and got a boyfriend. Then one day the mom went to go visit her daughter, who was now a teenager, and asked her if she wanted to come live with her again. She didn’t want to because she had lived without her for a long time. Also, she loved living with her grandma because she had time to make friends and have fun. The mom also had not been there for big events such as her birthdays, her first boyfriend, and her first dance—where she got to go shopping for her first dress.

Luckily the daughter stayed with her grandma, where she was happy. Meanwhile, the mom got married and moved to California away from her daughter. The mom never had contact with her daughter and never got to see her finish growing up. So the girl wondered how her mom was doing and what she was up to.

The girl grew up and became independent because she learned to do things on her own. This helped her because she didn’t end up like her mom. The only thing that she inherited from her mom was her looks; like her brown eyes. The girl went to college for eight years in Carolina. She got a job as a doctor, and she met a guy named Nick, who was a lawyer. He had brown hair, he was tall, and was sort of strong. She married him and moved to Tennessee. A couple years later she had two kids; she had a boy named Cody and a girl named Cindy. She raised them the way she wasn’t raised by her mom and gave them the life she didn’t have with her mom. She still hasn’t seen her mom or talked to her since the day she moved to California.