Deep Fears

We had just finished watching our shows when we decided to check the news. The headline flashed across the screen. 

War. Russia had invaded Ukraine. 

A chill raced down my spine.

Suddenly I was 12 years old, running to the front door of our house where my youngest sister was standing, tears running down her cheeks.

"We're at war," she sobbed. "We're at war with Russia."

I was stunned. Her words echoed my worst nightmares. I lived in fear of Atomic weapons. I had read books and seen photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I studied the ranges of the missiles of the day and stared at maps plotting the distance from Cuba to Atlanta.

At school we practiced duck and cover. We knew our emergency plans. Rendevous points where I would gather my sisters. We even practiced walking home together, taking the most direct route which meant following the railroad tracks, not the streets. Walking home to a place that I knew could not protect us from the nuclear fallout.

Those were the thoughts. Then there were the dreams. The nuclear nightmares. 

The sixty intervening years dissolved in a flash.