Going home

In a couple of hours I’ll be on a plane to see my parents. I feel safe just about everywhere I go, but home is the safest place I know. I knew very little fear there…ever.

There was some fear, however.

It seemed like it happened every night. The ugly woman with the green face crawled through my bedroom window and hovered over me. She bore a slight resemblance to the Wicked Witch of the West, but she was not.

She was Fear.

Over the course of many years, the woman didn’t change much. A few times she pulled up in a utility truck and parked next to the house before she came in. It was the same truck that belonged to the man who lived down Groton St.. I wonder now if that nice man ever knew Fear was stealing his truck for the sole purposes of scaring me as I slept.

I don’t remember how old I was when I shook the dream. I still remember my pounding heart and wishing I could lock my blankets around my head. The entire thought still makes me a little uncomfortable.

I’m sure I got scared as much as any other kid, but I don’t recall many of the scary times from my early youth. In fact, apart from the recurring dream, the only times I really remember being scared as a kid were when Dad crashed his Monte Carlo and when the family came home to a ransacked house.

In the months before Dad’s wreck, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (or some other like group) was running a sad commercial. A young boy sat on his front porch–baseball glove in hand–waiting for his dad to come home. Dad got drunk, wrecked his car, and left the boy waiting forever.

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