Anomaly: Chapter 9

Sarah Centrella's childhood memoir, Anomaly

This is a chapter from my upcoming memoir, Read the previous chapters here.

Kicking Rocks

We stayed at the nursing home through the winter, which was a massive blessing because Idaho winters are no joke. The cold was relentless, the kind of chill that got into your bones and didn’t let go. Dad quickly realized that our little car, which already didn’t fit the whole family safely, would never survive the harshness of an Idaho winter. So, he traded the car in for a beat-up, four-door International truck. It wasn’t much, but it was what we had, and it would get us through the next chapter.

By the time the snow started to thaw, and the daffodils began to bloom, we had worn out our welcome. Again, Dad reached out to the believer network, asking if anyone knew of a place we could stay. And again, we got lucky. Someone had a 15-foot camp trailer on a piece of remote land near Boise. It wasn’t far from a feedlot, so Dad might be able to find work there once we got settled, they said. It was a temporary solution, but it would do for a few months.

The trailer was parked about a mile from the road. By the time we reached the area, it was the middle of the night, and Dad was exhausted. He nearly missed the turn-off because he was looking for a driveway with an address, not a cattle guard with tire tracks leading through an open field. Could this be the place? There was no one around for miles to tell him if we were in the right spot, he was hesitant. These were the kinds of things that made Dad nervous—hauling his entire family and everything we owned, into a field with no idea what was waiting for us, especially in the dark.