Anne’s hands wring tirelessly. The small black and white T.V stutters. A reporter’s voice fades in and out as a camera pans over a crowd of about 250 protesters sitting together at the Army Induction Center in Oakland.  The young men attempting to enter the induction center climb over the protestors with some difficulty.

The sight of the knot of soldiers at the door makes her stomach tighten. She remembers the loss. Why must there be war? Again. It seems every night now is are more and more reports of demonstration after demonstration protesting the US’s place in Vietnam. The news reports and grocery stores are filled with talk of planes bombing North Vietnam. Fear and anger spill out into the streets. Young people with signs and sad and worn parents waiting for word on their sons so far away.

Faintly she can hear the strains of music from down the narrow hallway. Rose is practicing her guitar again. Starting and stopping. Anne can imagine her daughters’ clipped scratch of notes in her sketchbook. The television noise fades away as Anne edges closer to Rose’s door. Lately they seem to be missing each other. Anne has been spending long days at work their time together feels strained and silent. 

The soft sounds of Rose’s voice come lilting from the room. A sad tune. Her voice is melodious and haunting. Anne cannot make out the words but the feel is isolation and disorder. How can a child so young even feel those things? The gaping hole left by the loss of her father comes to mind. Yes, that could do it. Longing for something you’ve never even known.

It has not been an easy thing parenting alone. Though it is also not such an anomaly anymore either. This knowledge does nothing to ease her weariness or her loneliness. Just as more suffering the same malady does not make them partners in pain or the pain any less. This she has learned in the last twelve years.

It is not as though she has not tried to find someone to share her love and life with. The seemingly never-ending merry-go-round of men with their glinting eyes and toothy smiles has only increased. But  the familiar feeling of home, of her childhood room, her books, her father, the large rosebush and lilacs under the kitchen window, the letters that smelled of wax and turpentine, the familiar shape of his eyes and smile and hands on her has never ever dimmed nor been duplicated. And she knows it never will. 

Next Chapter: Anne, Somewhere, the first time