We didn't know any different

She would hold the picture that depicted her early years in a way that she barely remembered. The back of the card read Carla - age 6 - Easter 2009. She was cute as can be, dressed in a small bunny costume, carrying a basket of multicolored plastic eggs.

Those were the days that her mother worked three jobs and she spent much of her time at the family restaurant. Those days that she was under the care of her loving but much too busy grandmother. Running from table to table, seating new customers, ringing up bills, managing the kitchen staff, and dealing with angry customers, her grandmother did what she could to make sure that Carla was engaged with something.

Her grandmother would give her random tasks to complete. On this day, dressed in pink and white fur, she quietly sat in a corner of the restaurant. That corner she remembered as being a world unto itself, but upon returning as an adult, saw it as a wobbly little stool next to a broken wooden shelf. She sat quietly completing her task, putting individual chocolate pieces inside of colored Easter eggs. As customers left she would offer them an egg. A shy child, she would lift up the basket towards them, but not say a word, offering merely through gesture. Quiet, obedient, part of a loving world that could not afford to give her time; this was her 6 year old experience.

She would look at the picture now, tears running down her face as a flood of memories came rushing back. She sympathized with the little girl, dressed in that little Easter bunny suit, as the woman she is now, and it broke her heart. How much things had changed since those days of a quiet simplicity. And that was the realization that led her to a new beginning.