Lost Love Letters
Lost Love Letters:
Table of Contents
Title Page
An Indie Chicks Anthology
Compiled by Cheryl Shireman
Table of Contents
Georgina Young-Ellis
Consuelo Saah-Baehr
Peg Brantley
Sibel Hodge
Barbara Silkstone
Lia Fairchild
Melissa Smith
Faith Mortimer
Sarah Woodbury
Gerry McCullough
Tonya Kappes
Donna Fasano
Karin Cox
Heather Marie Adkins
Lynn Hubbard
Lisa Vandiver
Cheryl Shireman
Christy Hayes
Mary Pat Hyland
Penelope Crowe
Kat Flannery
Katherine Owen
Linda Barton
Cheryl Bradshaw
Louise Voss
Christine Nolfi
Shanon Grey
An Indie Chicks Anthology
Compiled by Cheryl Shireman
Copyright 2014 Still Waters Publishing, LLC.
The authors in this collection retain and hold their individual and respective rights to their pieces.
Published by Still Waters Publishing, LLC.
Published in ebook format, January 2014
EPUB Version
ISBN-10: 1-62566-039-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-62566-039-8
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.
Cover art by Paul Beeley of Create Imaginations. createimaginations.co.uk
This book was formatted by CyberWitch Press cyberwitchpress.com
Introduction
Love letter - what phrase conjures up more intense feelings than that simple phrase? Most of us have received a love letter. Many of us have written a love letter. Some of those letters were tucked away in the bottom of a drawer. Others were ripped to shreds or destroyed in symbolic flames. Whatever their fate, the one characteristic all love letters share is their raw and intense honesty. When we are declaring our love to another, we are speaking straight from the heart. Such words are precious because they capture a true moment in time. Whether a love lasts or not, in that moment, those words are real and sincere.
Last year, when the talented women writers of Indie Chicks were thinking about the subject of our next anthology, Barbara Silkstone came up with the idea of a compilation of love letters. Immediately, we all responded with enthusiasm. But what kind of love letters should be included in this anthology? There are many kinds of love letters - sweet and innocent; frank and honest; torrid and steamy; or sad and full of regret. What type of letters should we include in such a book? We tossed around some ideas and eventually came up with this one - Lost Love Letters. These are the long-overdue love letters we never got around to writing. The recipient might be a first love, a child, a parent, a favorite aunt, or the one that got away. The subject was wide open, and the instruction was simple - pour your heart out. And so we did.
I hope you enjoy these letters. Be prepared to smile and remember your own loves. Be prepared to glimpse into the hearts of many women. Be prepared to cry.
And, when you are finished, nothing could make us happier than if you took the time to write your own Lost Love Letter. The best time to share love is always now.
Cheryl Shireman
Creator of the Indie Chicks Anthologies and Indie Chicks Café
Visit us at indiechickscafe.com
If you do write a letter, stop by the “Café” and tell us about it!
Table of Contents
Georgina Young-Ellis: Dear Danny.................................1
Consuelo Saah-Baehr: Dear David..................................7
Peg Brantley: Dear Shirley Jean.....................................13
Sibel Hodge: To My Darling Child................................19
Barbara Silkstone: To My First Love.............................25
Lia Fairchild: Dear Brother.............................................35
Melissa Smith: My Grumpy...........................................39
Faith Mortimer: To My Darling Daughter...................45
Sarah Woodbury: To My Daughter..............................49
Gerry McCullough: Darling Davy................................53
Tonya Kappes: My Eddy................................................57
Donna Fasano: Dear Jake................................................63
Karin Cox: Dear Foetus...................................................67
Heather Marie Adkins: Dear Cory................................71
Lynn Hubbard: Dear Aunt Susie...................................79
Lisa Vandiver: Dear Mom..............................................87
Cheryl Shireman: To My Beloved Children.................93
Christy Hayes: Dear Peggy B. .....................................101
Mary Pat Hyland: Dear George F. ..............................105
Penelope Crowe: Dear Michael....................................113
Kat Flannery: Dear Miss Austen..................................115
Katherine Owen: Dear JT..............................................119
Linda Barton: Dear Grandma.......................................123
Cheryl Bradshaw: To Tiffany.......................................131
Louise Voss: Dear John.................................................135
Christine Nolfi: Dear Dad.............................................143
Shanon Grey: Dear Mom..............................................151
Georgina Young- Ellis
Dear Danny,
Your life was too short. I thought one day I’d hear you had become the famous guitarist of some famous rock band. I fantasized we’d meet—perhaps on one of my visits coming home to Tucson from college. You’d be in town having just returned from a tour. By that time, I imagined I was better looking than I had been at seventeen when we were together. My body had filled out a little, my hair was long with bangs: that Marianne Faithful look. I’d see you across the room, maybe in one of those bars on 4th Avenue. Your hair would be long too, as it always was. You might have been working out, and you’d be strong, but slim like a true rocker, and more handsome than ever. You’d see me. You’d smile, surprised, and walk toward me. We’d hardly have to speak. We’d just know, now that a few years had passed, we wanted each other again.
I remember when you broke up with me in the park on Sarnoff Drive, about a month after I graduated from high school and you were going on to be a senior. You told me you weren’t attracted to me anymore, and broke my heart like I didn’t know it could be broken. I’d never been in love—I think you made me fall in love with you. You were the first person who ever called me beautiful. We were standing in the light booth in the Drama Department’s theater. We hadn’t started going out yet. It was about a month before prom and I already had a date...a boyfriend whom I sort-of liked. I was looking at the stage through the window, adjusting the lights. You were standing next to me, looking at me. All of a sudden you said it: “You’re so beauti
ful.” You wrote me songs and poems. No one had ever written anything to me before. You wooed me, you were cute, I fell for you.
I broke up with the boyfriend on prom night and you and I saw each other the next day—our first date, in the company of my best friend Ginger, the three of us hanging out on 4th Ave. I bought that baby blue Led Zeppelin T-shirt. For the next two months you wrote me more poems and songs. We made out in my car or in your room. I remember how you’d put a record on, Jimi Hendrix, for instance, and after listening to a song just once, could play the guitar part perfectly. I thought you were a genius. I remember thinking how sad it was that your parents, especially your awful step-father, didn’t appreciate that. You bought me the Heart album I wanted, for a graduation present. You were into Fleetwood Mac, but me, not so much. We both adored Zeppelin, Hendrix, Joplin...Rush.
Before I met you, I had already made plans to leave Tucson for a year to travel. Those plans couldn’t be changed, so we talked about what we would do when we were apart. How we would manage for that year, though I’d be home at Christmas. I thought we would be together forever. Then, that night in the park, you told me you didn’t love me anymore. How does a person fall in and out of love in two months time? That was all we had together, two months. I was devastated. I was despondent. My mother didn’t know what to do with me. I played “Piece of my Heart” over and over. I was destroyed. I didn’t understand. I thought you’d come around. Then I left town and began my year of traveling, but all I could think of was you. When I got back to Tucson after that, I came to see you in the record store you were working in and we talked like friends, but I could see you weren’t interested. I kept wondering what I could do to make you fall in love with me again.
For another year, in which I started dating again, I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Finally I went away to school in New York—came home on vacation this hip, sophisticated girl. I saw you playing in a band in Choo Choo’s on 4th Ave. We saw each other from across the room. You looked strong, your hair was long but well cut, you were more handsome than ever. You came toward me, we spoke, but you didn’t see how beautiful I’d become. You would never fall in love with me again. It was the last time I saw you.
Several years later, after I was married and had a baby, I learned you had died of AIDS. This disease had already claimed many of the dear friends I’d had in New York. It seemed to haunt me. And now you. Why? Was it drugs? I heard you’d been living with an older woman. But, were you actually gay, or bi-sexual, or had you been experimenting? Somehow I was sure it was drugs...needles, to be more specific.
There’s a certain lack of closure when your first love dies so young. You go on with your life, happy perhaps, in love with someone else perhaps, but always wanting to be looked at again with those eyes that first saw you as beautiful. I still need to tell you how much you meant to me, how important it was to be loved like that at seventeen. To remember those days we had together as the happiest of my young life.
I wish this letter could be good-bye, but I realize now, I can never say good-bye to you.
From across time and space,
G
Georgina Young-Ellis
Georgina lives in Queens, New York with her artist husband and musician son. She is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and was a stage actress for many years. Born and raised in the Southwest of the U.S, she went to school in New York City, graduating from New York University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater.
Georgina writes The Time Mistress Series: romantic, time-travel novels, spiced with adventure. The first book in the series is The Time Baroness, set in Jane Austen's England. The next is The Time Heiress, which takes place in pre-Civil War New York City, and the third, The Time Contessa, takes the reader to Renaissance Italy. Georgina is also a screenwriter, journalist, film/theater critic and blogger.
Find Georgina online at georginayoungellis.com
Consuelo Saah-Baehr
Dear David,
Even though I should repent, I feel no remorse. If you called today, I would do whatever you said. It’s an attraction that is outside the boundaries of common sense, decency and loyalty. It would be hypocritical to confess, “Bless me Father for I have sinned. I would have committed adultery given the opportunity. The lover superseded my husband and could have been my husband had he not been distracted by success.”
When you responded to my wedding announcement, you included a note: “It would be wonderful to get a glimpse of you. Could we have lunch?” You put your private number in the note and we met at Café des Artistes. After three hours of picking at our food and guzzling our wine, we stayed long after the lunch hours were over. I visited the Ladies Room three times because of the wine. When you left the table to do likewise, two couples lingering at the next table asked me if it was really you and I said yes. It was.
I was wearing a fur bonnet that tied under my chin. That sounds excessive but it was just right for my face during that year. It had a Dr. Zhivago kind of drama and made me look glamorous. I was dressed in a black wool gabardine suit with a short double-breasted jacket and an a-line skirt. I had bought the suit to look business-like and reliable for an appearance before the design board in the village where my new husband and I were seeking a variance. Those Presbyterians would have been surprised to know the same suit was being used to unbalance a former lover.
“What are you doing now?” you asked when the second bottle of wine was opened.
“Recovering,” I said. I thought it was a clever answer but that’s exactly what I was doing. Recovering from the shock of marriage. Recovering from twenty-three days in Tuscany with a moody stranger.
“I mean job wise? What are you working at?”
“I write ads for a department store chain.”
“Really? What kind of ads? You mean clothes? Tell me an ad you’ve written,” you said, smiling.
“I just wrote an ad yesterday for very thick carpeting - Your friends will think you’ve struck it rich.” I had been ashamed of that headline but then I knew it would amuse you. The wine and the occasion acted like a truth serum. I was thrilled to tell you every nuance of my hard sell copy and I knew it made me more precious in your eyes. “Just the coats you want for spring,” I said slowly as if reciting poetry. “Real wool with generous balmacaan sleeves. On sale now. Just when you need them most.”
You stopped talking and looked at me. In the movies there are long close-ups of people looking at each other but in real life it’s hard to hold someone’s gaze. I thought you were going to ask me about my new husband. We held the gaze silently and after a while, it became so intimate I could feel my body going limp. You asked for the check and I knew we could make love that day. Who would have guessed that telling you a callous headline would help me commit adultery? In the cab we kissed repeatedly as we had in the old days when you were still an ordinary man. We melted into each other in an embrace that held all our wistfulness over how things had worked out for us.
I returned to my marriage apartment like a zombie. I knew if you had asked me to leave that day I would have done so without a backward glance but you had obligations and were leaving for California that afternoon.
I was doing freelance work at home and had an old typewriter that I used pushed against a wall. I typed facing the wall all the next day. I typed copy for miniature electroplated charms depicting the signs of the Zodiac. “Choose all twelve signs,” I wrote in the copy. “They are perfect stocking stuffers.” The psychiatrist who had his office one floor down came to my door and asked if I could type somewhere else because he could hear me and it was disturbing his patient. He said he could hear every key go down. “Why do you type so hard?” he asked. I said okay not knowing what I had agreed to do. Fifteen minutes later he came up again and said he could still hear me.
At one time, in popular songs and literature, women expressed their love obsession by saying they “ached for his touch.” I wouldn’t have believed that was possible but it happened to me. I fel
t a complete ongoing ache that was almost paralyzing. It was as if my arms were configured in a phantom embrace and I was stuck in that yearning and nothing but the actual embrace could ease my limbs. Nothing as thrilling or interesting has happened before or since. You went away and by the time you returned almost a year later I had been carried by circumstances to an expensive suburb. I had finally settled down and turned to the first page of The Joy of Cooking.
Yours,
CSB.
Consuelo Saah-Baehr
After a hectic middle life, I now live alone in a modest cottage near the sea. I have intimacy issues and three children. I also have five grandchildren who have overturned almost everything I previously thought. After publishing several books with the big six, I found out it could be the worst thing that could happen to a writer and also took too long. With the advent of Mr. Bezos and Amazon, I have finally satisfied my two passions: writing and commerce.
Find Consuelo online at consuelosaahbaehr.com
Peg Brantley
Dear Shirley Jean,
In all of my life I’ve never had a more complicated relationship than the one I have with you. I think maybe at some level you feel the same.
Peeling away the layers of what we’ve shared over the years is a lot like cleaning out an old storage room. Some things I remember and cherish, some things I really, really want to get rid of but I’m afraid that if I do, an authority figure (like the IRS or God) will demand accountability, and other things are just junk and need to be tossed in one of those giant trash bins and forgotten. The trick is taking enough time with each item to understand what category it truly falls into. What looks one way on the surface could be different given enough consideration.
Complicated.
For most of my life, I felt as if you’d made a choice. And whatever that choice was, it didn’t include me. I was something you were stuck with. If post-partum depression would have been an available diagnosis at the time of my birth, it might have helped. At least you would have known it was a hormonal thing and not some spawn of Satan thing. Instead, even your hindsight heroics to walk away from me—your baby—for a few moments simply underscored the problem child you had to deal with. You were perfectly fine before my birth, so therefore it had to be me—that whole spawn thing—complete with colic and dirty diapers.