“Anything, Mommy.”
“Promise me you will always tell our story and you will always be you.”
“I promise, Mommy,” I replied.
My mom smiled and looked out over the lake as fireworks illuminated the night sky, and put her arm around my shoulder, drawing me even closer.
“I will always be with you, Lolly. Especially when you wear your bracelet. It will always be filled with memories of our life together. No one can ever take that away.”
She kissed my cheek as the fireworks exploded overhead.
“I will always love you, Lolly,” she said.
“I will always love you, too, Mommy.”
A breeze rushed across the water and over the lip of the dock to jangle our bracelets.
“You know, some people say they hear the voices of their family in this lake: In the call of the whippoorwill, the cry of the loon, the moan of the bullfrog,” my mom whispered. “But I hear my family’s voices in the jangling of my charms.”
The way she said that gave me goose bumps. It was so beautiful, I had to look at my mom. Flashes of light from the fireworks illuminated her curly, blond hair and the freckles on her rosy cheeks. It was as if a million cameras with a million flashbulbs were taking her picture, so I’d never forget how she looked at this moment.
I looked even closer, and it was then that I noticed tears streaming down her face.
A year later, my beloved mother would be gone, dead of cancer.
July 4, 2013
Fireworks boom overhead, knocking me from this memory.
I am now seventy. My mother and father are long gone. My husband is dead, my daughter, Arden, grown and on her own in Chicago five hours away, my granddaughter, Lauren, is in college. For too many years now, I have celebrated my birthday alone. And yet when I look into the night sky, I am still mesmerized by the simple beauty of summer fireworks, overwhelmed by memories.
As my head tilts upward, I can feel tears trail down my face.
My mother may have taken half of my heart with her, but I got to keep all of her charms, and she was right: The charm bracelet is a constant reminder of her love for me.
I vowed to myself I would share our family stories with Arden and Lauren because none of us ever really dies as long as our stories are passed along to those we love. I started to tell them about our family when they were both little girls but then they got so busy, and life—as life does—quickly skips away like a flat piece of shale across Lost Land Lake.
I try to remind them of our history and traditions through the charms I still send, but my daughter has shrugged off our past and me, as if we were a jacket she no longer likes to wear. And her absence stings, like the first frosty day in October.
So while I pray they will return home, I continue alone: I still read my mother’s poem out loud to the lake on my birthday every Fourth of July as fireworks explode. And, without fail, the wind will rattle my charm bracelet—now even heavier than my mom’s ever was—and I will shut my eyes, and listen to the charms.
Happy birthday, Lolly, I can hear my mother say.
part one
The Hot Air Balloon Charm
To a Life Filled with Adventure
One
May 2014—Arden
Arden Lindsey realized too late that she was shouting.
She got up and slammed the door to her office at Paparazzi magazine, fuming over the terribly written article just submitted by her youngest online staff writer.
Beyoncé rocked her “recently unpregnant stomach” with sushi?!
Are you kidding me?
Simóne was always more interested in champagne and backup dancers than writing bubbly headlines and flowing sentences.
“And how many times can you use some form of the word ‘sing’?” Arden continued to yell. “Sing? Sang? Song? Singer? Songstress?”
Arden took a deep breath.
“And could you even attempt to code the article for the website?” she mumbled to herself.
Arden plopped back into her chair, the momentum causing her black bob to swing in front of her face and her thick, black eyeglass frames to bounce on the bridge of her nose.
She removed her glasses, closed her eyes, and rubbed her temples. She could already feel the dull thump of a headache approaching even before it arrived, just like the vibrating tracks of the El train that ran outside the hip River North warehouse offices of Paparazzi magazine announced the train’s arrival.
You can’t stop this train, either, Arden thought, pulling two ibuprofen from her bag as the El suddenly roared by her window.
Arden popped the pills into her mouth and drained the remnants of her latte. She inhaled deeply, attempting to channel her inner yogi, pushing her glasses high onto her nose and positioning her fingers over her Mac like a trained pianist.
Behind the Scenes with Beyonc[ACUTE “e”]!
(Only [ITALIC “Paparazzi”] Was There!)
By Simóne Jaffe
[P]
Are you ready to party, single ladies, because [CELEBRITY_LINK “Beyonc[ACUTE “e”]”] is!