Creative Nonfiction

Ever since I can remember, even now still, I have longed to feel like I belong—seen, understood, accepted and welcome as I am. Rarely happens. One might think I would have come to some understanding of this after all these years! But I think maybe I’m slowly beginning to finally get it.

My skin is burning, the heat of the sun penetrating the top layer, leaving it red and itchy. Sweat trickles down my brow, across my forehead and into my eyes. Wiping it away with the back of my arm, I sit on my sleeping bag in the middle of the round, earthen pit. Miles away from the nearest town of Vermillion, South Dakota, high in the hills, without any distractions, I am grounded in the present. All I can do is feel.

Indistinguishable thumping followed by crashing noises and wood splintering interrupted my nightly ritual of washing and drying dinner dishes. I dropped the tea towel, flew down the hall and up the stairs. The noise stopped. I stopped too, with my hand on the doorknob to my youngest son’s room, Schrodinger’s cat heavy in my mind, knowing that this was a box I had to open, but it could change everything.

There used to be mourning doves outside my bedroom window, and over the years I watched generations of grey birds nest in the same planter pot perched on top of the baker’s rack on my patio, where it stood with its back against the glass separating it from the bedroom. The dawn brought with it motherly “coos” and the chirping of hungry hatchlings, and the sunlight would streak in through the bare blinds…