I have hope that sanity and good luck will continue to hold so we do not have to go back to preparations.
Cans of Baked Beans
A surprisingly heavy cardboard box,
with my eight-year-old-name on the address label.
I had won a contest.
Maybe I guessed the date of the first snow
or the number of jelly beans in a jar.
My prize was cans of food.
I took them carefully, a couple at a time
down to the spidery, damp cellar.
There my earnest father excavated dirt
late into the night, building cement walls.
I added my proud contribution
to our nascent family fallout shelter.
We practiced drills in school,
huddled under third grade desks
as emergency drill sirens screamed over our heads.
Taught to shield our eyes from the blinding light,
then the imploding glass of the first pressure wave.
At night, we dreamed of nuclear bombs.
Excited by the shelter, I would play
kitchen or scientist in the small musty crypt,
lining my precious cans up on the cement,
reshuffling them frequently
according to color, size, cuisine.
My parents never said why
the shelter was never finished,
at a loss how to explain
surviving nuclear war was moot.
So the tins and air masks stayed there.
Mice ate the labels.
Heather Saunders Estes 