I rooted through my drawer, moving things aside, throwing stuff on the floor. It was no use it just wasn’t there. I kept hoping it was in there, but it just wasn’t. I searched the entire house after my parents went out for their weekly food shopping.
I went so far as to look in my fathers’ cabinets in the basement. He had strictly forbidden snooping. I had to be cautious when I looked in these drawers because he was very careful where he put things away. He remembered exactly how he left them and could tell if anyone had been in there.
Susan Carberry First Communion-
I was equally as careful. I memorized how each object was placed and in what order. I had years of experience, so I was very good at it. So far, my intrusion into his inner sanctum had never been detected. In desperation, I looked in his secret stash in his desk drawer under his Playboy magazines. It was nowhere. It was gone.
I would have to innocently question my mother to see if she knew the whereabouts of my most precious collection. It had taken me years to amass. And now, now it was gone. I prayed it hadn’t gone the way of all my other beloved treasures, removed, and never to be seen again.
It all began innocently enough. One year in the early Spring I decided to plant some Zinnia seeds in the front yard. In front of the white, wooden fence my father had built years ago. Well, he never finished it. He had completed the front section that faced Fellowship Road, it had no sides.
Kids in the neighborhood often made obnoxious remarks about how come you only got half a fence, your father is too lazy to finish it, or too poor to buy more wood. Maybe all or part of that was true, but it didn’t have anything to do with me.
Anyway, I digress. I bought the seeds at the Ben Franklin 5 & 10 Store down the pike on Main Street in Maple Shade where I live. It was marked down to five cents. I used my own money. I rarely had any money so I was careful about what I invested it in. I usually spent any money I acquired on candy.
The illustration on the packet was beautiful, colorful Zinnias of red, yellow, and orange. I loved the flowers. We only had two plants in our front yard, one was a bush we called the Communion Bush, but now I know it’s called a Spirea. When someone in the family made their First Holy Communion, which was a big deal in an Irish Catholic family, we had our picture taken in front of this white-flowering bush.
The only other bush was my mother’s lilac bush that grew next to the front sidewalk. It was my mother’s pride and joy. It was wonderfully aromatic. The harbinger of Spring in our house was the lilac blooming in early May. She would cut branches from it and put them in her crystal vase in the center of the kitchen table.
When my older brother, Harry came over on Sunday morning to visit my mother, he would cut a bunch. He would give it to his wife, Maryann for her Sunday dinner table.
Every day when I came home from school, I checked on my zinnias to see how much they had grown if they looked thirsty. I would drag out the hose and give them a drink. Oh, and how they grew tall, reaching almost to the sky, wonderfully bright and cheerful. I was so proud that I had created this wonderful oasis of color in our otherwise boring yard of dandelions, and buttercups, and the occasional clump of grass.
As the summer was in full bloom, so were my zinnias. I smiled every time I spied them from the kitchen window. Then one day I came home from playing with the kids in the neighborhood. And as I rode my bike towards my house, I noticed something looked different. Then it hit me. My lovely zinnias were no longer there. And in their place was a long strip of dirt, decorated by small pieces of mowed down flower petals and leaves. I stared in utter disbelief.
I ran into the house and howled at my mother, “where, are my flowers mom? My zinnias are all gone.
She looked up at me and said, “I’m sorry Susan. Your father cut them down when he cut the grass today.” There was no point in confronting my dad about things like this. He never offered any explanation. He might simply answer, it’s my yard to do as I wish, or girls shouldn’t be doing work in the yard. That’s a man’s job.
I stopped playing with my dolls when I was about twelve years old. My mother put them away for safekeeping in her room, in the storage space above her clothes closet. I had two dolls. One was a collector’s edition of Shirley Temple. She was dressed in an authentic Scottish kilt, and military-style jacket and tan beret with a red feather. She wore woolen knee-high socks and patent leather shoes. Her hair was dark blond and had perfect ringlets. I had her for many years, but she was in perfect condition. I kept her and her clothes in a miniature white trunk. That had a special space for her on one side, and on the other side was a place to hang her change of clothes.
My other doll was older, she was a baby doll called Betsy Wetsy. You fed her with a little bottle that you could fill with tap water. And then she would pee in her baby doll diaper, just like a real baby, except she did it as you were feeding her.
My mother kept these dolls for me for a long time in her closet. Perhaps hoping that someday I would have my own little girls who would like to see, and play with their mom’s childhood dolls.
One day when I was sitting on my mother’s bed, she was looking in her storage area for her hat, which she kept in a hatbox. I noticed that my doll trunk and Betsy Westsy were no longer there. ‘Mom where are my dolls?” I felt a sense of dread.
“I don’t know Susie.” She answered. But she wouldn’t look at me, she had her head down. But I knew, I knew my father had taken them away.
After that, I tried not to let myself get too attached to things. But then I discovered my special collection of autographs of TV actors, was gone as well. I had kept them hidden under my twin bed. This really made a great big empty spot in my heart.
My best friend, Joanie, and I had shared this hobby for most of our childhood years. We spent many a summer’s afternoons sitting in her screened-in back porch. We wrote long letters of our undying love for the stars of our favorite TV shows, requesting autographed pictures.
Our favorites were Western’s like Gunsmoke. I was secretly in love with James Arness. And then there was Wagon Train, and Have Gun Will Travel, and of course Bonanza. My favorite show of all time was Dobie Gillis, who I thought was the coolest. Because he was a beatnik that frequented coffee houses, and listen to obscure poetry, and snapped his fingers instead of clapping.
Even now sixty-plus years later it’s hard to fathom what motivated my father to abscond with not just my childhood playthings, but my memories as well.
The boarded windows of the house across the street are tagged with graffiti. Broken bottles, beer cans, and trash are strewn across the overgrown, dead lawn in the front yard. The steps are covered with yellowed newspapers in various stages of decay. Unopened mail tumbles out of the rusty mailbox. The sad truth is it isn’t the only house on the block that looks abandoned. This neighborhood is the poster child for urban blight.
