CHILDHOOD FEARS
I have been reading Annie Dillard’s autobiography this past week. It is a book rich in memories of childhood in the 50’s. Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Her autobiography, An American Childhood, is a delight. Annie shares the following: When I was five, growing up in Pittsburgh in 1950, I would not go to bed willingly because something came into my room. This was a private matter between me and it. If I spoke of it, it would kill me. Who could breathe as this thing searched for me over the very corners of the room? Who could ever breathe freely again? I lay in the dark. My sister Amy, two years old, was asleep in the other bed. What did she know? She was innocent of evil. Even at two she composed herself attractively for sleep. She folded the top sheet tidily under her prettily outstretched arm; she laid her perfect head…
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