text: To some where we came from is just as important as where were are heading. The belief that those before us, those who fertilized our growth. Determine the nature of which one carries themselves through life. In this respect I suppose it could be determined that I myself must have had my growth stunted, but in reality this is a belief I have never shared. However even those attitudes could not explain my emotions upon opening the box. The house was old. I had told myself this mine a million times; and unsafe as well. No place for a family. These were the excuses I told others, the ones I tried to tell myself but within the crumbling walls of my heart I knew them to be false. I was leaving to escape the guilt, the pain and most of all the feeling that my own children would now feel what I felt in my half-childhood and there was nothing I could do now to change that. It was in my final sweep of the house, checking for any trivial objects that may have slipped through the cracks that I came across the rusting metal box. It was more of a tin really. A still frame of a moment of a life long ago lived. Forgotten and cast aside like rubbish to disappear into oblivion. However as it so happened this tin of rancid memories wormed its way back into my life. I knew looking inside would bore into my very sense of self but I couldn’t stop myself. My trembling hands slowly pried the rust stained lid from its casing and just as it did separate so did the jacket of emotionless casing I placed around my heart and the sobbing began once more. Inside were pictures; paper and ink, but really they were more than that. They were a reminder of the normal childhood that I was robbed of when she was taken. A newspaper clipping, “Father and Child Left Behind”. The title didn’t do justice, didn’t convey the loss, didn’t depict the sleepless nights and lifeless days struggling on without her. My father, my own hero, had been broken by this. Who was I to be stronger than he! Sinking deeper and deeper into the icy waters of self-pity and regret I let myself weep. “Daddy?” A familiar voice fished me out of the icy numbness and into back into the living world. At this moment, this rebirth I realized I had to be strong. It was not a matter of if I could, but simply that I had to be. For them to have a normal childhood. For them to be happy. I had to be strong. For them.