The time I ran away from home involved neither running nor actually being away from home. It wasn’t for very long, either.

I was mad at something big. Most likely a perceived slight or a less than perfect manifestation of motherly love. Whatever it was, I ran into the room I shared with my older brother, packed my suitcase, and stormed through the kitchen, past her bewilderment and my brother’s smirking, and right out of the house.

The door I chose to leave by was a heavy one made of metal. Slamming it made a final sound. With a perfect sense of that finality, I swung the iron door hard and left my old life forever.

Now, this door led from the back hallway off the kitchen and outside. You went down two cement steps to the level of the driveway, under the open sort of carport common in those days. Listening, I may or may not have heard words between my mother and brother inside the kitchen. I hardly cared. I was out and free of that place. Now what to do? It was a cloudy day, cold, I think. We lived then on a wide main uncrossable street near an intersection at the top of the hill. Walking — or fleeing — down the hill meant eventually having to hike back up. The other way would take me in front of our closest neighbors and what friends I had, so this was not the way. At the moment, my escape route seemed unclear. I decided to find a spot in the carport itself and wait for a plan to come to me.

There was on the wall against the house, a wide shelf of corregated green plastic mounted over a couple of sawhorses. Below this shelf was a mess of rakes, brooms, shovels, cartons, mountains of rags, and the old push lawn mower. With a little remodeling it would make a splendid shelter and cubby for a weary fugitive. I slipped behind the handle of the mower and folded myself into a small space between some cartons and waited. From my vantage I could see into the old ladies’ garden next door and to the place where in days to come Joey and his friend would do a fairly disgusting thing. But never mind that now.

I waited. No one came. Nothing happened. Time passed. Hmm. Should I have packed more deliberately, huffed loudly as I dragged my little red suitcase from under the bed, heaved clothes over my head, slammed dresser drawers? Should I go back in now, and announce more emphatically that, yes, in fact, I was leaving home, never to return?

As I rolled these thoughts over in my mind, the iron door opened, and my mother appeared. So. Finally. She had taken notice. I was silent, didn’t move. The way she leaned out, turning her head from side to side, reminded me of Auntie Em’s panicked search for Dorothy in the witch’s glass ball: her face wrinkled with concern and fear.

But apparently there was not enough concern and fear, for the door closed again, and there followed another few minutes of nothing.

My hideout was cramped and smelly. Wedged among the cartons — and being quiet about it — strained my back. Whatever I had packed in my suitcase, it wasn’t food, but that was all right. A life on the open road was tough. I’d steeled myself to the hardship of it. If I went hungry, if I slept in makeshift shelters, so be it.

But wait, my brother was out on the step now. He looked down the street. Not for himself, I knew. He didn’t care if I’d gone off somewhere. He was likely part of the reason I had stormed out in the first place. Besides, he’d have our room all to himself. He was merely acting as my mother’s emissary. He too was baffled by the cleverness of my hiding place and retreated back inside after a few minutes. Would they call the police now?

A third time the door opened, and both of them stood on the top step now, she behind him, leaning over his head. I don’t remember any words between then, but all at once, he slipped past her into the house, as if, little detective, a thought had occurred to him, and he needed to check something in our room. Drat! What clue had I left behind?

My mother said nothing during all of this. In fact, what was there to say? In collusion with my brother, she had done a terrible thing to me, and now I had vanished. This incident, this escape from home was more than just another of the simple unloved movements I made around the house. It was at once a triumph of revolt and an indictment of family. For me, it was new and dangerous. It was something that, if handled correctly, might get us all in a newspaper, with me as its undisputed hero.

Finally, it was something more immediate and less philosophical that brought me home again. I won’t say I waltzed back in the door, but with an aura of victory, full of the knowledge that my time on the road had brought them both weeping to their knees, though they neither wept nor knelt in my presence, I passed silently through the kitchen, suitcase in hand, and went straight to the bathroom.