When I was a little girl, the steps of our shotgun house was my world – the only world I knew as I learned and grew. I could see nearby skyscrapers that seemed to touch the sky. I could hear the sounds cars made a few streets over as they went by.

But to the right and to the left in old castoff kitchen pots grew beautiful flowers whose fragrance induced a trance-like state that tweaked my imaginative powers. Until the sun was low and daylight became only a distant glow, I read about people I would never know and places that I could only hope to go.

I knew it was time to come in when Mama appeared in the doorway. Her “it’s not good to read when the light is too dim” signaled time for that day’s dreams to end. “Come and we’ll listen to the radio.” Our floor model Zenith that Mama bought with the insurance money from Daddy’s death.

The Radio had a place of honor all its own in the living room of our shotgun home. We jockeyed for closest position as we sat on the floor in front of the radio. Mama sat nearby as we listened with quiet intensity for sounds coming our way. Detecting changes of tone and paying attention to sound effects helped us visualize characters and actions. There were quiet arguments as we three fought to hear our choice of some favorite program. The Lone Ranger? The Shadow? It was hard to choose unless Mama, as she often did, decided we needed to hear the news.

Before I exit memories of our shotgun home, I sit once more on its hallowed steps. For it was there that I began to realize that my foolish, childish fantasies could never come true. Or did my fading dreams signal, foretell the ominous truth that I would never again sit alone amid the pots of flowers on the steps of my shotgun home; that I would spend the rest of my life sitting, in wait for someone to refute the truth of the news brought by the stranger at the gate who said my Daddy would be no more.

©2010 Rosalie M. Taylor