NIGHTMARES, BOOKS, POTS AND PANS

As a kid I had a recurrent nightmare: I rolled and rolled on a white sheet until I would wake up very scared, and tell my mother how I felt. She would tell me to say a prayer -"Angel de mi guarda..."-. My brother and I slept in the same bed with her. He was moved to a different bed when he was an adolescent, and I continued sleeping with her until I was around 12 years old. There were only three beds in the house and six of us. My two older sisters were already married. At night, my mother used her two younger sons to keep my father away from her. Violence was always close by. Sixty something years later, after getting rid of everything I had accumulated over decades -from books to pots and pans- the same nightmarish sensation came back: fear, pure unpasteurized fear. The empty space in the apartment I am moving out from replaced the terror I felt as a child: no one would be there for you when you need protection. Over the years, I was safe, sheltered by objects: books, pots and pans.