Throughout my life I have adored fire in some way or another, and to some extent it still holds true.  Now that I am older, I have grown to like fireworks the best.  The more you can do with fire, the more satisfying it becomes.
    I was three years old, just a little child who didn’t know any better.  I’ve been known to be curious, and thankfully it hasn’t killed me yet.  This time was a close one.  My mother was in the bathroom at the time taking a shower.  I was in the kitchen entertaining myself with all of those fascinating contraptions it held—the toaster, the sink, and especially the stove.  To this day, I remember nearly every detail of that kitchen.  It was one of the largest rooms of the tiny, two-bedroomed house that would later hold a total of five people.  The narrow entrance to the kitchen had a simple light switch at the immediate right side of the facing wall.  Despite my valiant efforts, the light switch always seemed to be out of my reach until I was a little older.  We also put our garbage bin on the corner of this wall and the right wall.  Sometimes garbage heaped over and spilled onto the floor.  My mother would yell at my dad for not taking it out.  I once had a terrible nightmare that someone had been stuffed in that garbage bin and was murdered.  The weight of the corpse eventually knocked over the bin, spilling garbage all over the floor.  It was a terrible dream that I never had again thankfully.  Also when you first walked into the kitchen, you would notice the washer and dryer on the left-hand side of the room against the wall as close as could be.  Following the wall was a sliding glass door to the driveway outside.  The wall then made an abrupt right turn, just as all box-type houses do, to create the kitchen sink with cupboards evenly spaced on both sides of it.  There was a small window right above the sink large enough to see our barely noticeable backyard.  Although the backyard looked insignificant, it became heaven to my sisters and me.  Now we come to that right wall that keeps burning in my memory so well.  This wall had cupboards too, just like the sink wall.  The refrigerator pinched the garbage bin in the corner.  On top of the refrigerator was a bunch of stuff...  records my dad didn’t want us to touch, old junk mail, anything you could think of.  There were cupboards right above it too that were minuscule.  It was in these cupboards that my parents hid candy and other goodies.  My sisters and I still managed to tap into this treasure box from time to time regardless of their prodigious efforts.  To the left of these cupboards were an identical pair roughly a foot apart from each other.  Surprisingly these cupboards were harder to reach because of the stove fan blocking the way.  Underneath the fan, of course, was the stove that had long caught my attention many times and drove curiosity deep inside of me like a stake through the heart.  In the center of the kitchen was a square dining table barely large enough to fit the four of us.  But let us return to the stove, where it all happened.
    I don’t remember spilling grease from a pan like my mother has told me.  But I do remember pushing that white, second button from the right on the top-front of the stove.  And I do remember seeing that tongue of flame protruding out of the right-front burner.  As I stood there staring at that brilliant color of yellowish-orange, I can remember that I felt as if Medusa had glared into my eyes.  I didn’t move, nor did I want to.  I was in complete awe watching the flame get larger, surrounding the top of the stove.  My affinity with this phenomena was soon broken when my mother got out of the shower and called my name wondering where I was.
    With legs run-walking as fast as they could take me, I hobbled over to my mother on the couch and had a seat.  My pregnant mother was garbed in a nightgown and was overlooking my baby sister Shannon.  She was sleeping peacefully at the time in her crib beside the couch.  Soon after I sat down, my mother got up suspiciously to check out a strange feeling she had coming from the kitchen.  I still see her gaping mouth, eyes bulged, and the terrified deep breath she took when she walked into the entrance.  My mother tells me that she saw the cupboards on fire, and that the flames which were once at my eye level were now tearing at the ceiling and racing towards the curtains.
    Quickly my mother scooped my sister and I in her arms while simultaneously throwing open the living room door with an unseen third hand.  In seconds she had us both in the car somehow, then ran back inside to grab some clothes for her near-naked body.  On her re-entry, she remembers seeing the entire kitchen in a plethora of flames, now heading towards the living room for certain domination.  Frantically my quivering mother infused a pair of pants on her and warped back out the door. My mother then snatched us from the car and headed for our neighbor’s house, which was close enough to sit on our driveway.  When the three of us reached Al’s driveway, the sliding glass door exploded from the heat.  The cry of this dragon followed through with a swipe of glass that managed to hit Al’s house as well as completely covering our driveway.  Al, the old knight, led us into his quiet house that clashed with the sounds of crackling, crying, and clanging from the fire engines heard nearby.  My final memory of this catastrophe is looking out of Al’s window facing the fiery woodpile.  The driveway began filling with firetrucks just as the flames reached the gas lines under my house.  With the sound of an atomic bomb going off, a mushroom-shaped Phoenix escaped from the top of my roof as firefighters dodged the raging inferno.  My cries for my dad’s complete Beatles record collection would never be answered.  I was an illegitimate pyroclasm when I was first born.  And then as I watched my accidental bane burn my house to the ground, I realized that I had become a pyroclasm again.
    Some time later my house was rebuilt with the kitchen the same way as before.  Cupboards were still in the same place, as was the rest of the room—even the stove.  My parents were prudent enough this time to buy one that I couldn’t tamper with.  I was never punished for my mistake.  My parents were certain that I wouldn’t do anything like that again; and for the most part they were right.
    Eventually my sister Mandy was born, and in even more time we became old enough to go to school.  Each morning my sisters and I would get ourselves up for school, get dressed, and meet at the new round table in the kitchen.  I was always the one designated to get the cereal and bowls because I was the tallest.  In the meantime, Shannon would get out the milk and spoons and set up the table.  Although Mandy was old enough to go to school, she was still not used to a lot of the responsibility yet, but in time she got used to it.  At first we let her get the spoons to help her learn, and then we had her start getting the milk when she was strong enough.  Shannon would then take my job, and I would put everything away and clean up a little.  We revered and loved each other a lot even at that age.  The older we became, the more altruistic we were for each other.
    My sisters and I had our fun at times too, despite how mischievous we were.  One time for dinner our parents bought us pizza before my dad went to bed and my mom went to work.  When the coast was clear, my sisters and I took a couple of pieces of pizza and chucked them at the wall near the light switch and the garbage bin.  At first the cheese helped glue the rest of the pizza temporarily on the wall.  Then it gradually started sliding down like an amoebae, leaving a thick red trail behind.  Within this slow, crawling process, the pizza’s suckers would lose their grip and plummet to the floor with a sudden plopping finish.  Our hysterical laughter gave away our surprise party that was quickly finished when our father appeared at the entrance of the door.  I don’t remember if we just got spanked or if we got the sweeper cord that night, but I do remember afterward that we cleaned up our mess.  The pizza went in the garbage, we washed off the walls with water from the sink, and we promptly went to bed.  My dad in turn flicked off the light switch and went to bed also.
    My sisters and I had fun in other non-mischievous ways too.  Whenever our parents were doing laundry in the kitchen, we would wait for them to finish loading, and then jump on top of the machines for an incredibly jolting ride.  After mounting these horses of steel, we would let our voices fragment into multiple sub-syllables as if we were a skipping CD.  Despite our alien-like language, we could still decipher what each of us was saying.  What we especially liked about the washer and dryer being in the kitchen was that during the summertime the washer was a nice place to sit on and stay cool, and the dryer kept us warm in the winter.
    Whenever we wanted to go outside, our parents forbade us to use the sliding glass door.   As a matter of fact, they never liked us ever using it for that matter.  We always used the living room door to the outside and took the long way to get to our backyard.  The green grass, clean air, toys to play with, and metal fence made a safe haven from the cigarette or marijuana smoke that came from the inside of the house.  Even further ahead of us was a small group of trees beyond the fenced in backyard that we claimed were woods.  Their admirably serene presence was a complete contrast to the sight of my parents’ constant fighting.
    It should not be surprising that our family almost never ate together at the same time, let alone at the dining table.  With some effort, the table could have been set up so that everyone had a seat and enough room to eat comfortably.  Regardless, time schedules often conflicted, but more importantly my parents never bothered to take such time or preparation.  There were also times when the table was being occupied by drugs instead of a family dinner, so my sisters and I ate in the living room instead.  On these days it appeared that the drugs were more affable than we were.  Friends of my parents would also come and visit the company of these disgraceful  pestilences.  We did not mind though.  We had been fed after all.  As long as our parents didn’t fight, we assumed that everything was all right.  But we knew that the fighting could not be avoided all of the time, with or without company.
    Even though both of my parents worked in factories, penury still had the best of our household.  The kitchen especially suffered from the dearth of food within the cupboards and refrigerator.  Shannon had become so good at cooking that whenever there was food she began preparing it for Mandy and me, no longer needing to depend on our parents.  However, on one particular night my sister had nothing to prepare.  Usually we could have just went down to the store again with a note from our dad and charged a box of frozen chicken or whatever else he would pick out for us.  The man who ran the corner store two houses down from us was named Pat; he had incredible mercy on us three.  But it was getting to be around 9:00 p.m. or later, and still no arrival of my father, and our mother hadn’t been there since we came back from school.  Although Pat would have helped us out any other time, he still needed a note signed by our father in order to give us food.  Our grandfather brought us Kentucky Fried Chicken that night.  My father had to work especially late and didn’t get home until 10:00 o’clock.  We didn’t mind so much that we wouldn’t have eaten that day, but were instead scared if our dad was ever going to come back again.
    As far as I can remember, I was always the child who would constantly ask for that glass of water before I went to bed.  My sisters would sometimes follow my lead, but it was clear that I was the most notorious one.  One night I got up from my sleep having trouble with my asthma and headed for the kitchen sink for a glass of water.  It must have been a weekend or when my mother worked on the day shift, because she was there giving me a glass of water before I blacked out.  My breath had been stolen by my asthma’s tight ropes around my lungs.  I had struggled to breathe many times, but this had been the first time that I absolutely could not take a breath on my own.  My mother began screaming out my name I think, and was giving me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation over the sink.  But that was the last thing I remember.  My mother later told me that when my breathing was restored somewhat, she picked me up, shut the light off in the kitchen, and took me into the bathroom.  There my mother created a self-made steam room by running hot water through the shower so that my lungs could take in the vapor to aid my breathing. In time my breathing was completely restored, and soon after that my mother put me to bed.
    My father told me when I was older that the number one problem that I would face when I got married would be money.  Time and time again, my parents constantly fought over money, which unfortunately often resulted in physical violence.  I remember one particular incident when my mother’s head was constantly being blasted against the washer and dryer by my father, while my mother was simultaneously kicking my father in any vital place possible and clawing and punching his face.  As my sisters and I cried and screamed to stop this ferocious aggression, it became more acrimonious with swearing added into it.  Eventually they quit hitting each other, but the cursing and screaming continued.  My father stomped out of the sliding glass door with my mom following.  Their hollering continued until he was in his car and drove off.  With each of us hugging each other, my sisters and I continued to shed deep dark tears onto the floor.  When our mother came back in and tried to comfort us, we could not find it.  Eventually all was calm again.  My father and mother would get along for the rest of the day, and it would be only a matter of time when they had another fight.
    One of the largest fights fathomable that I remember between my parents had something to do with money again, as always.  They had always fought about this, but for some reason this time was extremely serious.  During the cussing and smiting battle that seemed to never end, moving from room to room, my mother managed to run out through the sliding glass door with my father close behind.  It was now her turn in line to leave for a drive, but my father yanked the keys out of the ignition and threw them into our small patch of woods.  With tears still running down my cheeks and my mouth still muffling out cries or deep breaths, I darted out that door towards the woods in search of those keys.  My sisters followed my lead in hopes that upon finding them the fight would then be over.  Together we managed to find the keys, and so I ran to the nearest parent with the tainted trophy.  I handed the keys to my father, but the battle had been ended during our search.  Our mother had run off and sought refuge at a friend’s house nearby as our father looked on.  With so many plagues of fights, the three of us would never know when the monstrosity would cease.
   It was on a spring afternoon that a reset button had been pushed on my life as well as my siblings.  We had not arrived at our house from school for more than an hour before we would be on our way to the laundromat.  Our mother had devoted the day to collect our clothing to do some washing because of our broken washer and dryer.  In the final hour, I helped my mother stuff piles upon piles of clothes into numerous garbage bags that we often used in our garbage bin, and quickly stuffed them into my mother’s car.  My sister arrived soon before our departure with a friend begging to have her go.  Since the car was so full, we could not have fit an extra person, although we had no idea why we were obliged to come anyway.  So alas we hugged and kissed our father goodbye, and began our new journey.
    I was ten at the time, and my sisters had just turned nine and seven when my mother left our father that day.  A side joke between my sisters and me is that we are still at the laundromat, and are currently on the spin cycle of all of the washing we had to do.  Since that day our parents divorced, they cleaned up their drug habits, and went on their own separate ways.  Although my father had cleaned up his life and could have won custody of at least one of us, he sacrificed the opportunity so that my sisters and I would stay together.  To this day we still communicate with both of our parents and will love them always.  And though our parents are very much apart and still fight from time to time over the phone, my sisters and I continue to get along and will always be together.
    Keeping a family together is much harder to do than starting one.  We all learn certain truths through our past to help us maintain a happy home.  Making a burden out of an awkward situation will only cause us to be trapped into thinking nothing can be done about it.  Families must come together and help each other in times of crisis, and must take care of each other in times of need.  But most importantly, love for each other should be at the very center of every family.  If all of these elements are present in a family, then that household will never become fragmented for all of eternity.

By Scott Cecil Allen.