Floorboards: My Life During The Summer Of 2009

The creaking of decade old floorboards is the sound that ricochets through my mind when the summer of 2009 is brought up. My family and I went back to our home country of Bosnia-and-Herzegovina that summer. We were wanting to explore more of the country rather than just sit at home, but I was not expecting to be put in a wretched state of mind. The deserted reminisces of my mother’s childhood would reveal a side of gratefulness that I never thought I could have. On, what seemed was, the hottest day of the summer, my sister ran up to my parents and nagged about going to do something enjoyable for the pretty day. My parents were merely ignoring her as they were sitting on the balcony of my grandparents’ house in Bilalovac drinking coffee and …show more content…
While others came in to break things. Very bad, mean people did this Selmic.” Mama continued to talk as I began walking to the bedroom. The thought of not having a fridge or a stove because someone decided to take it from a poor family, brought tears to my eyes. There was only one bedroom in the house and when you entered it there were even more clothes thrown everywhere and an ancient couch in the far-left corner that was missing its cushions. I never thought I would appreciate my twin bed back home so much until now. Along the walls and floor of the bedroom were my Mama’s childhood photos. In most of the photos she was wearing the same outfit: brown jacket, blue high waisted jeans and black rubber boots. She had a bland look in her face in all the pictures, as did everyone else in the pictures. I picked up a few of the pictures off the ground and I brought them to my Mama who was in the bathroom at this point. I handed them to her and she held them to her chest as she was glancing at what was left of her bathroom. The tiles were white, but covered with 14 years of dirt and scum. The sink was missing, and all I could see was the pipes coming out of the walls. The bath tub was of a pinkish tint, and had a big crack running vertically down the center; the toilet was also of a pinkish tint and it certainly has not been used in 14 years and it would not be used any time after that. My thirty-minute showers soon after that were cut in half as to not waste too much water because others will need it more than me. We all walked back into the living room where Mama took the photos away from her chest and started glancing through them. At that point she was smiling rather than crying. I was puzzled by this change in emotion that I had to ask, “Mama why are you smiling