Letter One

Dear Mother,

Do you remember when I was a little girl?  I know you do.  It was so very long ago to me now, those days when sunlight was golden and pouring down like warm rain upon my shoulders, every day as sweet as the last.  My days were that way because you made them so.  You instilled in every day joy and wonder and peace.  You unleashed my imagination and it has never been restrained, never boxed in.  For this, I thank you, Mother.  I have never had to truly be bored, for I have a mind that writes stores, that creates worlds in which I live.  Even at the worst of times I had an escape within my own mind.

Do you remember, though, those days when I was a little girl and we would sit in that sunshine in the empty lot next to the house next door?  We would sit in the sun, or sometimes in the shade of that one lonely tree.  You would help me pick dandelions or laugh as I ran picking them myself, gathering them up in tiny hands (hands that have never grown much beyond small dimensions).  I would bring them proudly to you, wondering as you showed me how they would yellow my skin like butter.  I would wonder even more as you took needle and thread, slipping heads from stems and making chains and crowns that were the worlds very best, very most precious jewels.  Do you remember, Mother?  I do.  I live in such moments.  They are golden and sunshine filled in my mind.  I can breathe the air, hear the quiet even in the urban noise.  Bliss.

Hold that memory close and close your eyes, feel the dandelions upon your brow.  I let the milk inside the stem be your panacea.  You are healed of all this world could do to you.  We are back there in that golden time.  We are both young again.  We are in that sweet sunshine, just the two of us.  I will sit upon your lap and you will run your fingers through my hair and fell my child-lips upon your cheek.  Close your eyes, Mother, and dance with me through our memories, hand in hand through fields of dandelions, flower chains upon our brows and sunshine in our hair.  I'll never let go of your hand and time will never find us there.