Ashes Arise

The Beginning Ties

Our troubles that we have in our lives never seem to start off easy. They start off like a leaky pipe. Slow at first; drip, drip, drip. Then slowly it gains momentum and speed, and it builds and the crack in the pipe bulges, releasing pressure. Adding more water until it's a flowing stream. 

That's how my story; my journey started. Slow and steady and then a break in the damn all at once that overtook all of me. My name is Ashley, and this is my story.

I grew up in a small town the kind of town in Ohio where you weren't anybody unless you were the star athlete or at least on the team trying to be just as good as the star player. Your parents were living through you and all your activities. A small catholic town where the sign you saw as you drove in read 'Friendliest Town in America'. Two schools a private Catholic school and a regular run down stuffy public city school. 

Rows of corn and Beans surrounded the town and the smell of soybeans hung in the air from the nearby mill. We were the Delta Wildcats in our public school system. This was the kind of town where you had to have a grandfather that had a business or a farm in order to be known and well liked.

For my parents just starting off when they were 20 and 21 two young and clueless adults; they bought their first home in Delta, Ohio. 535 North Washington Street, yellow house, chipped paint, musty old basement, dilapidated garage, but it was theirs. Little did my parents know this town had secrets of its own when they moved in 1997 right before I was born that summer. My mom was painting the living room a horrid salmon pink and she couldn't afford a different color; it was on clearance. 

As she dipped the paint brush and bent the bristles against the can to catch the pink drips, she caught a figure standing in the doorway of the dining room. She thought maybe she was just getting tired because my dad wasn't home, she was heavily pregnant, and the dining room was dark. She slowly got up from her knees and stood up brushing any paint off her hands and onto her blue overalls. The old house creaked and before she could walk across the living room to get to the dining room the figure ran through the house and out the back door. She backed up against the wall forgetting about the wet paint and went straight for the phone on the wall dialing my dad at work. She could barely breath when he answered as she recounted what had just happened. 

The very same night my parents crawled onto their queen mattress on the ground since they didn't have their bed frame yet and curled up in bed. My dad held her tightly knowing she was scared from the day's events. Just as their eyelids began to become heavy, they heard a shader of glass and banging. The sounds of pops and pounds rang through the air of the night. My mom cried and my dad ran down the stairs to investigate. As he peeled back the living room curtains, he could see what appeared to be a flicker of fire, he quickly ran to the other side of the house peering through the kitchen window to look near the garage. 

There he saw a wooden cross brightly burning, the windows of the garage busted out with bricks, and bullet casings lying around the yard. This tiny 'Friendliest Town in America' was definitely letting its presence known to my Puerto Rican father and my white mother. 

That's where I am from a humble yellow house that yes was musty at times but was filled with the laughter of me, my two brothers, and youngest sister.