The Proverbial Red Bag

"Hope he takes me home",  I think to myself as a petrified five year old.  Looking out the passenger window of the old rusted out yellow and white Chevy pickup I sit confused.  We're driving down a long, narrow, and windy gravel road.  Rocks spackling the wheel well loudly and the headlights barely able to catch up to the dusty darkness ahead.  I can remember sitting there with my huge, red leather overnight bag.  Resting in my lap, filled with nothing but the contents of my underwear drawer dumped out from the dresser as I go over recent events in my head.  Why was he doing this? What was so bad about what I did that they are taking me away?  The drive seemed to last forever but being so young it may not have been as far as I had perceived it to be.  Who would have known that sitting in the front yard, talking to my neighbor friend while waiting for dinner to be done would end up so traumatizing... 

Earlier in the day,  my mother had told me to come back home from next door because dinner was almost done, dad was almost home.  So I, being the fast thinker that I was (and still am), had decided to stay in my yard and talk with my friend and patiently wait on the property line.  Technically, we were still in our own yards. Little did I know that it would warrant such a punishment. 

I was whisked into the house, spanked, and got the verbal lashing of the century.

Enter the big red bag. 

She throws it on the bed, tears the drawer out of the dresser and dumps everything into this bag.  It was then that I was not so eloquently informed that I was a horrible excuse of a child and that due to this fact, upon my fathers return from work I would be leaving the home forever.  They were taking me someplace else since I didn't know how to obey them.  I, at the age of five, was told that I was not good enough to live with my parents any longer. 

Dad would come home, pack me and my belongings into the truck and soon we would be on our way.  Some time during that horrifying yet silent drive, he turned to me and asked if I was ready to behave.  With my head hanging in shame, for what reason I still don't know, I would agree.  He then turned the truck around, drove me back home, and this would begin my life long struggle with my family, trust, and relationships. 

Sometimes I feel that it's still just me and my big red bag.  Some of the items inside have stayed with me all of this time. Some of them have changed, and been replaced by others.  I still find myself sorting through it and being reminded to this very day.  Hopefully, someday in the near future I will be able to hang it up and leave it behind completely.  Until then, this bag and everything that goes along with it is still a very big part of who I am.