Category: Writings

https://puttingmyfeetinthedirt.com/2018/07/01/july-writing-prompts/

In the summer following my birth,

I was five months old. I lived with my mommy and daddy and a sister who was a few years older than me. My dad had a car it was a Chevrolet Corvair. I cannot tell much about it from the one photo I have but it looked like it was a light color.  The year was 1969. http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/09/summer.1969.timeline/index.html

Around this time, my mom was blond-headed and she wore her hair up in a beehive look.  I know my daddy smoked Marlboro cigarettes and worked in a car garage in the local city. I am not certain as to what my mommy did. See, all this time was way to early for me to remember. I do however have accounts of this time in my life given to me by certain relatives. I also have only a few pictures of my life back in the summer following my birth.

One day while looking into a drawer that my adopted mom had, I found a newspaper article. It looked really fragile and old. I looked for a date and day on it and it said August 1969.  The article that caught my attention was one that told of a man getting into a fight with a bar bouncer and that guys friend jumped in and was fatally shot. The article went on to tell of the one who got shot in his chest, died on the way to the hospital.  I wish I had of memorized names and things because this article was about my daddy.

I guess the summer after I was born was a life changing event for me. My mommy had two daughters and her husband was killed. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He also was defending his friend and ended up  dying. Something to say for his loyalty. He was 23 and he still probably thought he was invincible and nothing would happen to him. As does many his age, they sometimes don’t understand just how dangerous things and behaviors are.

I often travel in my mind to that day. I wonder about it, as if I could actually piece together the day’s events. I most certainly can’t. What I can do though is learn from it. Find something or anything I can from that day  in my life. My world was forever changed and a part of me is angry still that he chose to defend his friend, but if he hadn’t what might have been? I do not know why that summer after I was born turned into one of the worst things possible, but it did.

I will forever question that day as I have done most of my life since finding that article. It was meant for me to find, I believe that. No one was ever going to show me it and because of that day, I ended up being adopted by my daddy’s sister. Who is to say , what might have been, and what happened then, no one is left for me to ask, that I have not already asked. I guess I will just have that article etched in my mind with a whole piece of my heart.

We cannot erase history. We cannot change our past. However, we most certainly can take knowledge from our past and make a better “now”, a better “today”.

MwsR ❤

Thanks for reading!