Another kind of love story...

“Brown Paper Bags”

By: Nora Steuber-Tamblin

{Visit Nora at this online link to her page at Authors Den.com}

An excerpt from Brown Paper Bags:

For March 16, it was an exceptionally warm morning. The sun's rays shining through the window woke me. I watched them move across our bed then slowly creep to the side of the room where Dad lay sleeping. Soon brightness and warmth filled the entire room.

Watching Dad sleep, I thought how empty the bed looked now Mom was gone. Our lives had changed so much. Lying awake watching him, I tried remembering life with her. She had been gone so long now we barely missed her. I tried remembering what she looked like. I never thought I would forget but I had.

Robert was the first to rise. Since Mom left, he was always the first one up. Listening to his footsteps, Nora and I laughed knowing he would skip the last step to crash into something. He made noises to scare the Bogeyman. He did this every morning, just in case he was hanging around. Every morning we heard his crash. Quietly Nora hustled Brenda out of the room to keep her quiet so Dad could sleep. We usually tried staying quiet till Dad rose but today was so beautiful.
I crawled onto Dad's bed waking him. I missed not being with him. Yawning and stretching he smiled.

Brown Paper Bags is a story of a family's love. A father and four young children try to maintain the household after the mother's abandonment. Just when life seems under control foster care arrives removing them from their home. Separated into three different homes the children grow up strangers. Forty years later these children are drawn together and try to regain their family bond. They learn they had been removed from a home of love and placed into homes of abuse and neglect. As foster children their hearts never forgot the place they called home.

©2001 Nora Steuber-Tamblin

END

Author's Comments:

My name is Nora Steuber-Tamblin, I am the narrator to this story. When my family recently united after being separated forty years it was such an amazing journey that we created Brown Paper Bags. It is not so much a memoir of a family as it is a journey of love.

I am a published member of The National Poet's Society with poetry also published in Illiad Press and SparrowGrass.

{Visit Nora at this online link to her page at Authors Den.com}