Wind Is Only a Spirit by Martin Peters

Author:Martin Peters [Peters, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781669868491
Publisher: Xlibris US
Published: 2023-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Life with my aunt and her family would be an uncomfortable one. For some reason I found it extremely difficult to relate to them, and it always made me feel uneasy. I felt as though I couldn’t be myself, so rather than trying to be something that I wasn’t, I instead chose to spend almost three years as a closed-in little boy, suffocating all my emotions by being an introverted automaton.

My Aunt Marie, Uncle Louie and their four children were living such a sheltered, fairy tale life that their dull everyday routine forced me to yawn my way through it. Even though I was living with my aunt the state of Massachusetts still had custody of me and would send a social worker over every six months to check on my progress.

The Garrett family were all very nice people, but I simply could not open up to them, and whether it was because I didn’t grow up with them, or the fact that my wicked mother’s constant bad mouthing of them over the years poisoned me, I couldn’t say. So for the time I lived there I tried to act like an obedient dog learning the ways of the family and trying to fit in.

The most difficult time of day for me was supper. This meant the entire family would be sitting together, and even though I was made to feel welcomed I always felt like a man who, for the first time, was about to sit down to dinner at the home of his fiancée’s parents. As safe and simple as the life they made for me was, my uneasiness put many miles between us.

My friend Peter Scott, who lived on the north side of Weston, became my escape as we spent most of our days together near his house, sitting in an abandoned train depot talking baseball and waiting for the commuter trains to pass through.

1968 and 1969 snailed along, and by school’s end 1970 I was preparing myself for another summer of boring repetition when my Aunt Marie sat me down.

“Johnny,” she started, “I know how much you like baseball, and I was talking with Uncle Louie about getting you into a baseball camp this summer. Would you be interested?”

“Yeah!” I exclaimed, wide-eyed and excited.

“Good,” she smiled. “I’m gonna see if I can get you in for the first two weeks of July.”

My love for baseball was beginning to turn into a passion, and when my aunt confirmed my two-week stay I could barely sleep at night, anticipating the first of July.

The camp was simple, two ball fields, a swimming pool, a mess hall, sleeping quarters and a chapel on the hill at the entrance gate.

Forty or so kids settled in for the two-week stay. Rising at seven and bedding down at ten left us fifteen hours in between—six hours of baseball, five hours for meals and showers, three hours of free time in the evening for either swimming, hiking, archery, or board games in the snack room, and one long, excruciating hour for the morning Mass.

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