An apology

You didn’t know that I thought about you, every time I fried some chicken and served it with steamed peas and white rice. I knew that was your favorite as a little girl, and I remember how your pigtails bounced when you sat at your mama’s table, eager to bit into a drumstick or a thigh.

You didn’t know that when I walked down Main Street and passed Barlow’s Drugs and Restoratives, I felt the urge to cry when I passed the display window. The displays of sleds and snow shovels in winter, sun chairs and umbrellas in the summer melted my heart – because I recalled you jumping up and down in the winter when it would snow, begging to go outside to sled down the hill behind your grandfather’s house. And I recalled the smile a trip to the Savannah beaches brought to your face.

Those long, quiet afternoons when everything was so innocent.

You didn’t know that I stood at the back of the auditorium when you graduated from high school, hidden from view, or that I was there when you became the first woman in your family to graduate from college – and Vanderbilt, no less. I could see the pride in your papa’s face, the face with a profile that Modigliani would’ve killed to sculpt, and those lips, so soft and sensitive to the touch.

It was your mother, deer sweet Verbena, who asked me to leave after she read the letters I wrote to your papa.

I’m sorry, dear sweet child, that I walked out of your life without a word – had no choice, really, but to disappear into the night when your mama found out. But I know you’ve had a happy life. I saw it at your wedding and the birth announcements that followed. Most of all, I’m sorry I never told you how I loved you.