Life Is Beautiful

"Rebecca, get on your lesson. Read the memoir I handed you." David Straughten told his daughter sternly and pushed the Shakespeare memoir towards her.
She sighed and nodded, "Alright. Do I read aloud?"
He looked up from his paperwork and nodded. "Yes. Your mother and I would like to hear it."
Rebecca looked over to her mother and received a smile and a small nod. Rebecca smiled back and picked up the memoir.
She cleared her throat and began reading in iambic pentameter.

"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun, coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun, if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white, but no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight, than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know, that music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go, my mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare, as any she belied with false compare."
She looked up and saw her mother and father sending her a proud smile. She smiled back, feeling her cheeks get rosy with delight.
She placed the memoir back on the table and a question that had been racking her brain since last nights bombings had come out of her mouth.

"Father, what are we going to do when Frank is good enough to leave?"
The sudden blunt question took both David and Adalinda Straughten by surprise. David Straughten put his pen down and folded his hands a top of the table. Adalinda stopped her cooking and looked over at her daughter with surprise.
"Rebecca, that's a question I'm afraid I can't answer at the moment." David Straughten said calmly and smiled at his daughter in reassurance.
She sighed and nervously traced patterns with her finger along the smooth table. "Do you have an idea of what we're going to do?"
David and Adalinda were a bit taken a back at their daughters sudden urge for answers from the situation with Frank.
"Rebecca, don't hassle your father." Adalinda scolded her daughter and went back to chopping up some vegetables.
David Straughten just looked at his daughter peacefully and saw the admiration in her eyes for this boy, and the sudden curiosity.
"Now Adalinda, it's quite alright. Rebecca's just curious. Like most girls." David Straughten chuckled and smiled at his wife.
Rebecca almost rolled her eyes, "Father I'm not like most girls. Most girls are concentrated on boys and their childish fantasies about love. But I don't care of such a thing. I'm going to be a photographer, you know that." She held her head up high, in a slightly smug way.
"What about your future husband and children?" Adalinda Straughten asked her daughter.
Rebecca scoffed, "Please mother. I have such a long way to go. Although if I do have a husband, he's going to help around the house as well. He'll cook and clean, just like I will. He'll respect me and I'll respect him."
Adalinda sighed and shook her head, almost disappointed in her daughters views on life.

Adalinda had been raised to be an old fashioned house wife. The one who would stay home and care for the kids. Clean the entire house, feed the children, take them to school, make dinner when her husband got home and still have time to please her husband.It was just the way she was brought up. She even thought of Rebecca's opinions child like, but thats what she was to her.
A child. Merely fifteen years old and preparing herself for the real world. But at the same time Adalinda held a proud feeling towards her daughter.
She was a good girl, never caused trouble. She always had the best grades, did what she was told and all adults loved her.
She was charming and held a maturity some other young girls tried to achieve but couldn't quite grasp.

David Straughten held that same proud feeling towards his daughter, except for him there was no disappointment.
He almost admired the way his daughter thought; How she was barely fifteen but still planning ahead towards the future and her success.
Especially in a time like this, where everything was going wrong between all Jewish people of Europe.
Rebecca still held onto her dreams and most of all her hope.
Whenever David Straughten looked up towards his daughter, he saw a spark that no one really had.
But whenever he saw Rebecca's eyes wander and lay on Frank, he saw a bigger spark between them that he never imagined would happen.
And truth be told, it worried him.