It was a time of fear, a time of diplomacy, death and steamrollers, dust… and a brave sister.

As a little child, I felt a quasi- fear of my parents, the strong feeling that they were total strangers. However it was me who was the stranger, a spirit lost between two worlds. My parents had somehow become something apart…the reason for my exile... From this childhood perception, or illusion, no matter what could or might happen, I would finally sleep again, despite strange lights and distant cries from the dark; mum would crawl next to me and the feeling of security would send me, amongst my screams against the entities that surrounded me, back to safety, the calm place, and eventually, restful sleep.


My father and mother thought best that a separation was the appropriate action…for them.

Although never hearing a sharp action or sudden word, the decision had been made.

This was about Christmas time, circa 1959.

Suddenly the house felt to be calm, my father coming home for lunch, eating his tuna sandwich, and listening to my mother play the piano. He loved her playing. Later he would tell me that she performed difficult pieces such as Chopin and Beethoven. This had been his solace, a short time away, an escape from the killing, the experiments necessary to create useful weapons for the country... but again, I ‘m getting ahead of myself.

He always had his head in his hands as if he had a terrible headache.

Peering around the corner from the hallway, father’s seat was positioned in the exact place to hear the music. Mother would perform, pushing down on the wrong peddle, shaking her head like a drunken conductor, though the music came through, despite the dramatics, somehow calming my father to leave and go back to the killing fields.
The emotional last chord seemed to go on forever, that peddle again, and the handsome man would rise, kiss his wife, mumble something, and leave the house. Mother stood from the piano, and walked to the window seeing him drive away through the curtains. She too was sad. Her once beautiful face had turned a shocking shade of white, her head bowed as she collapsed on the couch.

However we were living in Denver, the snow had been falling since late November.
My mother felt lost and wanted to go home.



***


Mother became seriously ill during that Christmas. My little sister and I would rise early in the morning in search of breakfast. Mum would still be sleeping, waving her hand over us to go away. As always, little Lou would take the initiative, finding the cereal, the bowls and the milk. She acted, despite being only two years of age, like the hired help, taking care of the basics, because the ‘madam’ was not feeling well. We ate our breakfast and laughed at each other’s jokes in our pyjamas and nightgowns.

This morning was different. Mum was really sick.

As always, I would disappear in my imaginary world while my little sister had to face cold reality. I remember walking out to the front room as Lou placed a cloth on mum’s brow. Lou was crying and in our little world, I knew something terrible, something beyond our understanding, was about to happen. Suddenly, my sister turned and walked back to her room in a huff of disgust. She waddled across the room, slamming her bedroom door.

Looking at Mum, she was not herself; screaming out names and cries for someone…

I picked up the cloth that my sister had been placing on her forehead, when there was a knock at the door. Jumping up to turn the doorknob, the door swung open, and there through the screen stood a tall, dark man with a stove hat, like Abraham Lincoln.

“Is your mother at home, child?”

I remember the darkness of his clothes, the shadows that danced around his head.

‘No mum’s sick now, so you should go away.”

“But I was told to come here, child. Can I come in?”

A wisp of wind came through the door and with all my might, I slammed it shut causing mum to wake up.

“God damn, Craig, why are you out of bed. Go! Before I get the wooden spoon!”

It was early afternoon.
.
I ran to my room and slammed the door, knowing that mum would turn back to the person she would always be, that beautiful caring person…despite the Angel of Death arriving at our doorstep; my first Christmas arrived, surprisingly. Despite the man that I would later equate to Abraham Lincoln. To this day, I have never seen him again, but knew, in time, that all of us would see him at some time or another.

**


My memories at this time are strong.

Bathed, clean and in cotton pyjamas watching two men on the television, which later I was told were John Kennedy and the Republican candidate, R.M. Nixon. Dad and mum were arguing about the T.V., because dad liked the ugly one, Nixon, and mum thought the young one was charming. They were arguing and laughing at the same time, which in my then view of existence; was a good thing. As usual, when everything started to get good, the bumps in the road began to smooth, we were sent to bed. It was only a few years later that I became aware that Kennedy won the debate, and eventually was elected the President of the United States.

It turned out to be the time that we left dad and America to visit Australia.

**


Denver in the fifties, as my dad would say, was an oversized Cow Town.

There are pleasant memories of that time, but the bad memories cling, like flies in the summer heat.

There is one memory that is so present in my consciousness, so strong, that I continue to smell the dust, the sound of the steam roller, and the experience would haunt me into puberty.

There were construction workers re-surfacing the road right next to our rented apartment. It was a summer’s morning because I can still smell the flowers and feel the warmth against my face looking through the window.

Dressed in jeans and tee shirt, and ready to go, I walked to the sidewalk and began my own little imaginary “construction world”: creating a place of my own construction, building houses, creating roads, moving dirt around in a big machine.

All at once my dream crumbled as an ugly man in a red hard hat stood over me, yelling that I had made a mess on the sidewalk and to clean the mess or else!

The sound of the Steam Roller coming close to me on the road, the angry man yelling down at me for dirtying the sidewalk put me in shock. Only a few seconds later, the shock turned to tears.

Crying as toddlers do, suddenly my little sister Lou arrived on the scene. (A mere two and a half and not much taller) She stood, looking up at the jerk, and started screaming at the ugly man who had made me cry.

‘Don’t yell at my brother! What did he do?”

Truthfully I do not know what happed next, except remembering my mother coming outside, and sweeping the side walk, saying, “You bloody low-life cowboy’s should be ashamed of yourselves, picking on a five year old boy.” Sweeping the dust off the sidewalk into there faces.

My sister at the innocent age of three, stood up for me against burly hard-hated twits, telling them what they needed to know, because her brother had been picked on, bullied by a middle-aged moron.

As time moved forward, my nightmares always included a huge Steam Roller, chasing me along dusty sidewalks, wanting to take my life.

My sister, however, has always been there for me, telling the hard-hated morons to stop and leave her brother alone.

The Steam Roller is always there…