Unwelcome Visitors

I woke up in the middle of the night by the sound of the footsteps outside of my house.  I sat up on my bed trying to listen harder to find out if there were really some one outside.  The scary feeling ran through me and made me just freeze.  After a few minutes I started to cry. That is when my mom came quietly into the room.  She came over and hugged me tight. She whispered to me to be quiet.  She pointed to my window and said to me, "Do not make any noise." I followed my mom's gaze and looked where there were shadows of many men crouching outside of my window.  I can still see the silouettes of their guns on their shoulders.  I looked at my mom with questions whirling in my brain, but she softly reminded me to be quiet and  told me to lie down and go to sleep. She said she would lie down with me.

I woke up in the morning with the sun shining through my huge picture window.  My mom had gotten up to do her daily chores.  The incident of the night came back to me. I  went to open the window, tiptoed to the window and lookdc outside but I did not see anything.  It felt as if it was a dream.

At the breakfast table I heard my mom was telling my older siblings that these were communists. "The unwelcome visitors are getting too daring and we all must be careful."  We had always known they were lurking somewhere out there behind the trees and further out in our field, but never had they come that close to our house.  Mom said that they were here last night looking for my dad .

The next day when my day was home from his office, I heard she told my dad that those communists who visited my house the other night sent word to the people who lived nearby to tell my parents  they wanted to have a "visit" with my dad. They said, "Too bad he was not home."

This happened so so long ago, when I was about seven years old but until this day, I still wonder how did they know my father was not home.  They must have watched and spied on us very intensely every day....