This is for Eva

It was thirty years ago this year.
I was helping with the college registration process.
I sat at a folding table with others
and student after student came by.
And I did whatever it was I was supposed to do.
I completely forget what that was now.

Then she came by.
She had that smile
and I had one for her too.

The words we said
are lost to memory now.

But she came over to my basement apartment
one afternoon.
And we kissed on the couch.
I remember her long hair
and beautiful face.

And she had on two bracelets
and she took them off for some reason I will never know.
And she lay them on the end table.

And we kissed some more
and she kept everything else on.
Her mother would have been proud of her.

Then she left.
I think she was 17 at the time.
Surely no older than 18.
I was older.
Twenty nine I think.

And I had never been able to settle down
and I guess I thought I couldn't with her either.
Because
we made no further plans that I remember to see each other.

And she went home
and one morning after that
how long I honestly don't remember,
She and her mother got up to make the trip into town,
her to go to school and her mother to work

and a deer jumped out of the darkness in front of them
and the car hit them
and Eva died.

I heard the news eventually
and I don't know what I thought of it then.
I don't remember.

But I know
I saw those two bracelets laying on my end table.
Still there.

There had never been any hurry to give them back to her.
I would see her at school someday again
and we had all the time in the world.
She was 17
And I was 29.

Except we were both wrong.
We did not have all the time in the world.

I don't think we parted sadly.
I think we both thought we would see each other again.
And I would give the bracelets back...
Or ask her if she wanted to come and get them.

That was thirty years ago.
And when I moved from that basement apartment
I took the bracelets with me.
Every time I moved in the years to come
they went with me.

I didn't want to throw them away.
They were a beautiful young girls.
They were not mine.

I knew her brother, but just a little.
a really fine decent person,
just as she was.

But I couldn't give them to him.
I didn't want to hurt a reputation that didn't deserve it.
They had been bothering her as we held each other
so she took them off.
That's all.

So the bracelets stayed with me
for years and years.
Until finally, a few years ago...
I threw them away.

I thought about all of this because...
My daughter went with me to a flea market..
And she bought
two bracelets.

I said nothing.

But when she went with her friend
and her friend's family
to Florida to the beach for three days...
She left the bracelets
on my bed.

And I kept seeing them there
and thinking
what if she doesn't come back.
What if I never see her again.

And then just now...
They came back.
And my daughter has the most beautiful
sunburn...
Which is so wonderful
because she is still alive.
She is still with me.
She is still my joy and my reason for living.

She is still all of the things
that Eva was to her father.

And is no more.

She is still alive
and happy and wonderful and beautiful
and breathing
and planning her life a day at a time
about how some boy is going to be the right one
and how Bambi is still her favorite movie.

This writing
is just for Eva.
And just for me.

I didn't go to her funeral.
I didn't feel I knew her well enough.

Now I know I was wrong.

May 26, 2008.