Another Memory

When the night seems to stretch out forever, the mind tends to play reruns in your head. Last night was one of those. It was a strange memory, pulled from a time that by all means and purposes should be suppressed and not remembered. It goes like this:
The house my family made home, is now used as a storage shed behind someones lovely residence. My young mind never thought of it as small, nor did I mind that it was basically a shack. It housed all that I knew in life, my parents, my brother and sister and my best friend Toby, the mongrul dog. Basically it was mostly a big kitchen, containing a black cast iron wood stove where my mother cooked, baked, heated water for our weekly baths in a big galvanized tub, .... heaven help the last one to be bathed! The kitchen sink had a pump handle to dispense our water, the single bulb light fixture hung forlornly from the ceiling in the middle of the room. The 'living room' was a long narrow room with sparse furnishings. A beatup couch with an equally beatup matching chair at one end, decorated with grandmothers crocheted doilies. A single picture graced the wall, shear curtains covered the only window in the room giving an attempt at prettiness. The elephant in the room, so to speak, was an old, old pump organ that had long ago ceased to play beautiful music. It sat huddled in shame, with large scratches, broken pull tabs and foot pedals that hung uselessly with only a vague memory of a former musicians touch. My mother had dreamed that one day it would be restored to it's original beauty and that she could bring it back to life once again. That dream was not to be.

As my mind wandered over the old memory, it took me to the only small bedroom in the home, which was for my parents. My dad had created a makeshift stairway at one end, for us kids to climb into the attic, to a room which housed two beds, or if you will, our bedroom. The ceiling was rafters, often covered with frost in the winters, and the floor was made up of plywood sheets which placed many a sliver in our bare feet! My memories of this room are vivid. There was a hinged wooden 'window' on one end which was propped open in the summer for coolness, but produced very little of that, only an abundance of mosquitoes! Cold wind blew through the pourly insulated walls and around that window during frigid winter months. The bright spot in all this were mother's quilts, which she had sewn out of old wool pieces and lined with ragged old blankets. They would be piled up on us during those long winter nights, so heavy we could barely breath! Mother would make the trek up the stairs each night before we'd retire and place hot water bottles in our beds so we could climb into some semblence of warmth. More often than not our breathe could be seen in the air. Laying still each night, we could hear the skittering of critter feet. My dad would put well placed rat traps along the wall to discourage those nasty things from entering our beds. Generally those traps would produce a nice end result!

Are these bad memories? Never! I did not realize until many years later that we were poor, you might even say living in poverty. After all, we had each other, clothes on our backs, new shoes to begin school with, a place to call home and amazing memories....even trekking to the outhouse during a midnight 'necessity' visit! Who could ask for more!!