“Dum Spiro Spero”: While I Breathe, I Hope.

Our house, image on an earlier post, was nestled in a corner basically. Really was no yard, but we had a swing set. The driveway ran down past the house and there was a relatively flat space there. It was usually a pile of trash. Mother couldn’t afford trash pick up.

Dad offered constantly to take it to the landfill but she wouldn’t let him. So we burned it. I spent many days raking the trash into a pile and watching it burn. My siblings and I would roast crab apples over the fire. Disgusting now that I think back on it.

I remember when I first started thinking something was really off. Mother came and got us all up at around 2 am and said there were people outside. I was terrified. She wanted each of us to watch a door. We did this all night.

The next morning we had to go set “traps”. We went into the woods around our house and set trip wires attached to bags of cans (so we could hear the rattle). We broke glass and put on entry paths. We had “guard duty” nightly. I slept a lot during classes at school.

No one ever asked if I was okay, just assumed I was a lazy kid.