“Beauty is Everywhere”

That is what the poster on her wall read. But, in her drab hospital room, she failed to notice beauty of any kind.
It had been months since she had been kept in the hospital. She was off school, and the doctors had kept her here for observation, even though her chemo was over. Today was the day they discharged her, and she could finally go home. Home. The word sounded so different, so foreign on her tongue. She missed it….

Mom and dad would arrive in a few minutes, and Sarah was geared up. She was bubbling with excitement. She heard the familiar honk of a car. Her car. She rushed towards it and gave her Mom and Dad a tight hug.

In the car, she dozed off, and woke up when they reached Sunnyvale. Her area. As they drove on, she saw it. Her home. The plain, beige building seemed to emit a kind of aura, a faint glow, which Sarah had never noticed before. She went in, gingerly, keeping one foot at a time, and then started running. She went to her backyard, where she saw the sight she had been craving to see for the past three months. Her tree house, and in it, her best friend. Megan raced down and hugged Sarah. The two pulled apart, and looked at each other with damp eyes, before pulling into another embrace. Sarah breathed in the scent of the crunchy autumn leaves, the dew on the grass, and her best friend. She had missed this so bad……

It was two weeks since Sarah came home, and everything was running smoothly. She had gotten selected for her tennis team, enjoyed school, had fun at slumber parties, and got into detention for forgetting homework. So all was well.
But what was new, was that she noticed things she had not noticed before. She found beauty in the way the fuzzy things floated off the dandelions. She found beauty in the way the sun set and the way the cuckoos called out to each other. She found beauty in the eyes of a child as he grabbed a kite which was floating aimlessly in the sky. She found joy in looking out of the window, and sitting on fire escapes. She enjoyed racing through sprinklers with kids, and hanging from a tree branch. She found joy in screaming lyrics to her favorite songs with Megan and stamping on crunchy autumn leaves. She fell in love with the sky every morning and wrote letters to the stars at night. She wrote messages in bottles, and sent them floating in the sea, hoping to brighten up someone’s day. She heard music in the sound of the brook, and the silly fights between her parents. And, she found beauty in her hospital room. The same room, which taught her that beauty is everywhere.