Old Memories...

The smell of the freshly cut grass and summer evening air filled his senses as he sat on an old wooden bench, looking out over the abandoned baseball diamond. He could see weeds pushing their way through the cracked dirt of the field. He'd never played on the field growing up, but he'd heard stories of dad and his dad's buddies always playing on it, that is until the war started. After the war had come, the field had remained empty, never to be played on again.

He remebered watching out his window how he had envied the other children as they played baseball, their laughter and obvious enjoyment of the game. He had noticed the Dads and moms cheering their children on on the sidelines how he had wished he could join them as he hid behind his curtain while his father had gone bye pushing the mower and his mother cried silently in the back room...

He still remebered when the war had ended how it had changed his father, made him quieter, darker and quicker to anger. He wasn't allowed to have other kids come over and he had learned how to hide and stay out of his fathers sight as much as he could. His mother had gotten the worst of it he thought now and closed his eyes on the memories of the sound of flesh hitting flesh. A sound you could never really forget.

That's why he was back in the small rugged old town sitting on an old bench and trying to forget the memories he could never really stop thinking about as he stared out at the old ball diamond. The old man had died in his sleep and he was here to sort through the things in the house, the house that brought forth to many ugly memories that ten years of thereapy could never really get rid of.

Walking across the street he slowy walked into the place of his childhood nightmares and went up to his old room. Memory after memory flooded through his head so that he sat abruptly on the dust covered floor trying to clear his thoughts.

Flashes of old nightmares went by so fast that he only caught glimpses.. He saw his mother once beautiful and full of life then turn into a shadow that was barely there. God the memories of when his mother died when he had been fourteen, she had just suffered one of the worst beatings his father had ever given her then jumped infront of him when his father and turned his fists upon his own son. He had shoved her down a flight of concrete stairs in punishment and he had lived with the memory of watching her not get back up after she had hit the floor in the basement, there was so much blood, so much.

He couldn't take it anymore and ran back to the bench so he could breath. Closing his eyes he sat and once again tried to clear his thoughts smiling a little when he felt the small hand grip his and the slightly larger one cover both of theirs.

There they were his salvation, His world, His wife of five years and their beautiful little daughter. Together they could do it, Together they were strong and the evil of the past couldn't touch them, He thought, as they turned together and walked back to the rugged house and away from the abandoned baseball field and old wooden bench and away from the memories..