Left In A Park In The Dark

When I was about ten years old my parents moved our family from St. Paul, Minnesota to Manhattan, Kansas. My father started working immediately and my mother went house hunting. She never did handle stress very well, and one evening for reasons that were unclear to me, my mother dumped all three of her children, ages 10, 7, and 4 out of the car and into a random, small, dark park. My sister and brother immediately began to cry, I was numb. Mother drove off in a rage but must have returned for my sister and brother because they disappeared behind my back, and I was left completely alone in the park as it became darker and colder. I sat where I was left. Eventually my mother came back to the park, opened the car door, and said, “Get in.” She took me to the hotel where my father, sister, and brother were already resting. I have always wondered why no one said anything when she did these kinds of things. And, why no neighbor came to see about a ten-year-old girl sitting completely alone, left in a park in the dark.

Caption: Left In A Park In The Dark

by Annmarie Throckmorton 2018