Dear Bepa
Dear Bepa
Life is sort of like dandelions, isn’t it, Bepa? With time, all of your youthful petals whither to gray and fly away on the wind, and then one day you wake up and realize that you have a bare head. The idea scares me, and sometimes I forget to make wishes before the dandelion puffs disappear. Then all of those seeds blow away across the hills with no purpose other than to become bedding for a bird’s nest.
The other day, Joan told me that Doda had died. Do you remember him? He moved to town when we were young and used to come up here all the time and talk to us.
“Gone like the puff of a candle in the wind,” she said.
I just stared at her for a moment. I didn’t know what to say. A thousand things came flooding back to me at once, and underneath it all, I just felt empty. Like I had missed something important.
So I just sat there with her on the porch for a while, drinking iced lemon tea. It reminded me of when we were young women, about the time she and Doda got married. The two of us used to talk for hours, about deep and trivial things. But then they drifted away from me, and for years I rarely saw either of them.
Even after she told me, I don’t think that I believed that he was really gone. I half expected him to walk around the corner with a grin on his old handsome face and tell us that it was all a joke. He used to do that, sometimes, when we were young.
Joan told me that he talked about his first love all the time.
“He always said she was a fiery chick. He used to go on about how wonderful she was, how she always made him smile. Never could get her name out of him, though.” She sighed. “I’d let her know that he passed, but I don’t know how to get a hold of her.”
I just ducked my head and didn’t say anything.
“Sometimes, I’d think that he still loved her. The way he carried around her amber sun necklace with him, wherever he went – Yvonne, are ye all right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I replied, brushing away the wetness in my eyes. “I’m sorry. It must be the ginger I put in the tea. Go on.”
A faraway look misted over Joan’s eyes and her fingers drummed absently on the edge of her teacup.
“It was hard, sometimes, bein’ married to a man who dotes on another woman. Ye learn to live with it, though. I used to be afraid that he’d go back to her, but I guess she never did have the guts to come back here.”
I stood up abruptly. “Can I get you some more tea, Joan?”
“Oh no, no. I’m quite alright. Besides, I’d best be going now.” She leaned heavily on her cane, hoisting her frail body out of the old wicker deck chair. “Ye know ye can never trust my grandkids bein’ alone. Always gettin’ into trouble, they are.”
She hobbled to the screen door, but she paused for a moment before pushing it open.
“Ye have any idea who she might be, Yvonne? The fiery chick?”
“I couldn’t tell you, Joan,” I said with a half shrug.
She seemed to eye me for a moment, but maybe she was really just trying to remember where she was and who she was talking to.
“Well, I best be goin’ now,” she said again. “Ye know ye can’t trust them boys to be alone –”
“I know, Joan. They’re always getting into trouble.”
She gave me a puckered old smile. “Ye always did know what I was thinking, now didn’t ye.”
I half smiled, helping her down the steps. “I’ll see you later, Joan.”
“Okay.” She patted my hand. “Bye-bye, honey.”
I watched her hobble across to the red Corvette, closing my eyes for a moment in the summer breeze and trying to catch a memory that flitted through my mind. It behaved like a slippery fish, though, and with a sigh I realized that I wouldn’t be hooking that one again.
The dandelions are blooming in the west pasture, Bepa, near the place where we used to fly our kite. That little hill holds secrets, secrets I’ve never told. But what’s the point, now? I’ve kept them to myself for long enough, and the investment rate on secrets isn’t going up anytime soon.
A long time ago, a certain beautiful man led me up among the dandelions that covered the hill. He plucked one of those sweet-smelling suns and put it in my hair, and then he kissed me, right there beneath the bare blue sky where anyone could have seen us if they had been curious. I didn’t care, though. It was my first kiss, Bepa, and I was so thrilled, so happy.
I thought that the feeling would never end, but it only took a couple days for me to hit rock bottom. Suddenly there were no more dreams of riding off into the orange sunset with my lover. I became paranoid that he wasn’t the right one, and that he’d try to exploit me for sex and money. I turned over every word he had said until I had all but convinced myself that he was part of the mafia.
I should have known better than to let my mind carry on like that, but by then I couldn’t climb out of the trench that I’d dug for myself, and I became cold to his touch. He wanted me; I could see that clearly. But instead of seeing it for the declaration of love that it was, I found myself thinking that he was trying to wrap me up in chains. And so I made the biggest mistake in my life and I left him.
I would take it back a thousand times if I could. But what is done is done. There is no going back now. And that is the last time that I’ve ever been kissed. Once. In my whole life, with all of those days of dishes and cleaning, I’ve only ever been kissed like that once.
There’s never a day that passes that I don’t think about that. It drives me crazy – why didn’t anyone else see me for who I am and love me? I guess you and Gram loved me, but that was a different kind of love. And you’re gone now.
It was all so long ago—time flies, doesn’t it? When you’re young and opening the doors the world has presented to you, it never occurs to you that there might not be enough time to open all of them. I was so busy opening doors that I rarely walked through them, and the one time I did step across the threshold, I ended up even more lost than before.
It was right after Doda and Joan fell in love, and I was tired of being left out and alone. So do you know what I did? I put on a little orange dress and went upstream to the city for the day. They say a city is full of strangers, and whoever they are, they are right. I’ve never seen so many people in my life.
But I still had high hopes, though for what, I don’t know. Maybe I thought I would find something in the city that would ease my newly aching heart. But I was so naïve. Who goes to a big place like that and thinks that everyone will turn and gawk at them just because they’re a newcomer?
Me, Bepa. Me.
I waltzed right into a café, sat myself down at the bar, and ordered an extra fizzy soda. It was a hot day, and my bare legs stuck to the red leather stools. I watched the door with excitement at first, waiting for the right person to walk through, for someone with bright eyes and a big smile to sweep me away. But the hours on the old Coca Cola clock slowly ticked by, and all that came through that door were middle aged business men wanting nothing more than to loosen their ties.
I was about to leave when I saw a stunning man, a man with chiseled eyes and sandy hair. He had a motorcycle helmet that he slid across the counter as he sat down and ordered a beer. My heart thumped. I thought that maybe he would be the one, that maybe we could ride away on his bike and live together forever. For a second, I thought about my first love and what had happened, but then maybe this time it would be different.
Normally I would have walked away in the other direction, too shy to make a move. But that day I was ready to step outside of my bounds and take risks. So I found myself sitting closer and pouring out my life to a man I barely knew.
When the sun crept lower to the horizon, he took me outside to his bike. I was laughing as we took the road out of the city—how could I not? There I was, far away from home, sitting with my arms wrapped around a guy that made my heart flip in circles.
But then he touched me, way out in the wilderness with no one around. Suddenly it wasn’t fun anymore. He was no longer just tall and beautiful—he was big and strong and scary. I tried to tell him to stop.
I’m sorry, Bepa. I’m sorry I never told you, but I never told anyone.
I don’t remember how I made it home, but that was the last time I ever went upstream in a little orange dress, and I think that that was when my last hope for true love died. I gave up. I didn’t care anymore. I don’t think I’ve done anything crazy since—I’ve been too afraid that something bad would happen, that nothing would turn the way I’d want it to and I’d be plunged back into all of those years of pain and loss and sadness. After that, not even Doda and all of his carefree ways could lift me up.
I can remember wishing that you could take me up to that hill again so we could fly a kite like we did when I was a girl, when everything was fun and flowers and we didn’t have to worry about anything.
That little red kite. I used to love that thing, didn’t I? I can remember bugging you every day to go flying. You must have gotten tired of it, but you’d still take me up to the hill on weekends.
I met Doda for the first time on that hill. We were so young, then—barely past the years of losing teeth and playing in the mud. He used to call me Auburn Yvonne. I asked him what it meant, and he said it was the color of my hair. But it’s really more like orange, isn’t it? Didn’t you used to say that it looked like fire? Like a sunset in summertime.
The sun is setting now. It is so beautiful. It looks just like it used to when you and Gram and I would sit on the porch and watch the stars come out. I find it crazy to think that even after we’re all gone the sun will keep rising every morning and setting every night, putting on a show whether or not we’ll be around to see it.
There is a dandelion growing between two stones in the walkway. I don’t know how it has enough vigor to make it in the hard earth, but there it grows, completely oblivious to its little feat of strength. In a couple of days, it’s pretty yellow head will turn white and fluffy, and maybe I’ll blow a wish on it. Maybe I’ll get up the courage to tell Joan that I am Doda’s fiery chick, and maybe I’ll just get on a ferry and try again. They say you can never know a city in just one day.
I love you, Bepa.
Good night.
