Hope Rising

I arrived back home. If you could still call a place home that was mostly wreckage, barely recognizable from the pretty little house that lived in my faded memory; a place that was empty of life and hadn’t known love or peace or anything close to happiness in a very long time.

Some of the main floor was still standing, though just barely. But it was the hidden cellar around back that had brought me here. I can still remember Mama whispering to me when we were led away, "if you make it through this, Hannah, come back to this place. I don't have much to leave you, but what I have is hidden in the cellar. Promise me that you'll come back."

I had promised. Wide-eyed with fear and confusion, I had said, "yes, Mama, I promise."

That was probably ten years ago. I'm not sure about time. Weeks became months which ran into years. But I'd been a kid back then and I was pretty much a woman now.

Mama and I had been recruited … that was a nice of way of sayin' the government made us go to work in the camps to support the war effort. Mama cooked for the troops. I had cleaned, ran errands, carried ammunition to the soldiers on the frontlines … you know … whatever needed doin' that a kid could do.

Mama was gone now. I lost her a few years back. Our camp was hit. I had been sent to carry a message to the front. I was on my way back when I heard the long whine of the missile through the air. Then an explosion so bright it hurt my eyes. I fell to my knees and sort of just curled up there. I knew then that she was gone.

One of the soldiers found me there later. Got me to my feet. Got me back to camp. I was handed a shovel and those of us left went to bury the dead.

It went on like that for a while. Other days. Other dead to bury. Other senseless errands to run. I didn't think the war would ever end.

And then one day, it just did.

Not like anybody signed any kind of peace agreement or anything like that. Nothing official. No one won. Everyone lost. The war just sort of ran out. Ran out of ammunition, ran out of reasons. There weren't many left who knew what the fighting had started for and there weren't much left to fight over anyway. Everything was gone.

So, here I was.

The only place I knew to go.

I found the cellar door. Buried under stacks of old tires, covered in a thick layer of dirt.

It wasn't easy, but I finally got it opened. Lit one of my few remaining candles and headed down into the hole.

I didn't expect much. And I guess I wasn't disappointed. There were a few boxes against the wall and some provisions from Mama's garden.

Just the sight of those neatly lined jars, even after all these years, took me back in my memory to a time when life had good things in it. Things like fresh air and sunshine. Laughter dancing across the garden quick as butterflies. I could almost remember what fresh food tasted like. And I swear I could smell Papa's pipe smoke floating on a breeze.

Papa. I hadn't thought of him in years.

He had left Mama and me when the war was young and I was even younger. Filled with the courage of the righteous. Off to fight the good fight.

He'd be home soon, he'd said. "I promise," he'd told his young wife and little girl. "Soon."

But I never saw him again.

I sat on the floor and wept.

It had been a long time since I'd cried. I think I used up all my tears the night Mama died. But I guess I found some more. Or they found me. Because they came. And I let them. I let them wash over me and carry me off to sleep. And to dream. To dream of happier times. To dream of my Papa's voice. And to hear him call my name.

When I woke up, I lit another candle. Had a few bites to eat of my remaining rations and I reached for one of the boxes.

I opened the lid and my nose tickled with the smell of dust and old paper. There was a hint of something from my memory - honeysuckle? I had a sudden image in my mind of Mama laughing and her hair blowing in the wind. And I remembered the feel of Papa's rough beard on my face as he hugged me goodnight.

I sat down, legs crossed with the box on my lap and fingered the papers inside. Letters. Ones written on paper and sent through the mail.

The mail didn't run anymore, of course. And the mail had kept running even when everything digital had been made useless.

I was so glad Mama had made sure that I learned to read. And to write. I had complained when she made me sit up with her at night after our work was done so she could teach me. I wanted to play. Or just sleep for that matter. But she had insisted. And I had learned.

I tugged out the first letter. Written in my father's hand. Strong, bold letters marched across the pages like soldiers. But the words. The words held and caressed with tenderness. They danced with his laughter. They crossed the years and the miles to carry his love to his family back home.

I read them all. Every one. I couldn't stop.

The last envelope was in my hands. Heavier and thicker than the others had been. I pulled out the letter and something fell to the floor.

It glittered gold in the candlelight, a heavy heart-shaped locket on a thick gold chain.

I picked it up and examined it closely. An engraving around the edges read, "You hold the key to my heart!"

I opened the letter and read the last words my mother ever read from my father.

He wrote of a dangerous mission. A long voyage. A hope that this could end the war and bring him home.

He ended with a P.S.

"I'm sending you this locket. It's a trinket, really, so don't get your hopes up that it's real gold! But you do hold the key to my heart, darlin, so I'm going to hang on to the key to this locket. It's only fair. Looking forward to the day we can reunite the two and I can have my little family back in my arms!"

I gathered the letters and the other boxes of things Mama had managed to tuck away before the soldiers had come. It wasn't much. A little bit of cash… mostly worthless these days. Some photos and a few pieces of jewelry and such that she had been able to save.

There were a few dried flowers and bits of herbs that Mama had saved in those early years of the war when things were getting bad but the worst was still out there - waiting.

And there were seeds! Envelopes full of them. Flowers, fruits, vegetables. Things that lived in the very edges of my memories.

Maybe there could be life again.

I climbed up from the darkness below into the darkness above. It might have been night. Hard to tell anymore. Hard to remember what the sun looked like, much less the moon or stars. I guess they're still out there. Somewhere.

I went to the front of the house for one more quick look around. The floorboards creaked under my feet and I took careful steps inside - through where the door used to be. I looked around but wasn't interested in staying. Too many good memories fightin' with all the bad ones for space in my mind.

I didn't want to remember home this way.

As I was turning to leave, I saw what looked like a picture laying on the floor just at the edge of my candle's light. It was halfway under the front door which had fallen in years ago. Maybe even not long after we had been forced to leave.

I picked it up, wiped it off on my pants. A postcard, not a picture.

I turned it over and saw one sentence in the now familiar handwriting. "I'm coming home!"

It was dated nine years ago.

I put the postcard with the other letters. Took out the locket. Closed up my backpack.

I placed the locket around my neck and I felt the weight of it on my chest. But I felt lighter somehow too. I felt something like hope rise up inside me. Or I think that's what it was. Something I couldn't remember feeling before. But it seemed like it was a good thing.

I gripped the locket tightly and spoke quietly into the stillness. "I know you're out there, Papa. And if you're out there, I'm going to find you!"