Looking back

            
             When I look back to that day, standing there clutching my teddy bear as if it were the only anchor to safety I had, it is not without sadness and the shedding of a few tears, even after all these years. That picture was taken over sixty years ago, but it seems that painful memories are like forgotten thorns that prick us with their wicked barbs when we least expect it. .
             My small, faded photo album is open to the first page and there is a vacant placeholder staring up from the heavy brown paper pages. I have removed this one photo to better see the aging photo. As I gaze at the photograph, it is with mixed emotions as I sit alone, this cold October night. I am no longer that young, frightened child watching her world drift from her sight in a black 1940's Studebaker. I am an old woman now, reminiscing over the old family album where this photo is the only one that reminds me of my father. Photos after that time never carried the same meaning for me as they had my mother. My mother loved photographs and I remember her with the omnipresent camera snapping anything that marked a remotely memorable occasion. After that day, the camera seemed less and less familiar and now any photo of my father is gone. I am not sure if there ever were any photos of my father or if my mother threw away any photos of my father long ago. Perhaps, the memories of him were too painful for her, and I could not blame her if that was the case. Perhaps, she had misplaced the photos of my father or had them hidden in a place where, like unpleasant memories, we store things from sight but never find the courage to completely discard them. Whatever the case, I can no longer remember the face of my father only the feeling that this photo induces: feelings of fear, sadness, and confusion as he drove away that one morning. .
             I never understood what the word "divorce" meant as a child. I only knew that the word was associated with fighting, my mother's sobs, and my father's angry voice.