Love, Lose, And Repeat

Old Nag and the Pony

I'll send this to your last address and maybe they will forward it to you, because you could be in Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, or the other side of the world and I wouldn't know the difference. But, It's sunny here--humid. I'm on pa's ranch drinking lemonade and watching that old nag clopping around in her pen with the woman who would have been your mamma sitting on her saddle. She looks like a shadow pressed against the side of the setting sun and your gram just swept open the screen door and told me not to take a taste of her blueberry pie she made special. She smells like the food she cooked for us. Pa's carving something out of wood and wandering around, not looking up for a second. I call to him, "That's how you nearly cut you dang arm off, you old fool, watch for branches." But he just mumbles and waves his knife at me and keeps going.

I don't think this will get to you. I don't think you'd open it, if I did. Who am I to you? Me and that woman on the saddle?  You would call her ma, if you were here, and she'd love you more than your real ma because she could never have kids of her own. I'm telling you that woman would buy you antique pearl necklaces at flee markets and make you keep it in the bottom drawer and pretend it was a secret so you could have fun playing make believe. She sure is something; you'd love her.

Me and your real ma, we are what you would have read in your file. We were a pair of cells tied together, creating a miracle, we loved as much as...a pile of rocks. Her name was Natalie and she is somewhere in Georgia on an orange farm.  You were better off then, baby doll. But what about now? You know the story. I hope to god someone told it to you, baby doll. Because I couldn't love much of anything, aside of myself back then, and your ma and I split faster than a patch of apples once the Codling moths got to it. We were kids, like you, so maybe you can see it now.

No one knows I write you, baby doll, because I don't want them to get excited. But why don't you come home and make a few old folks happy, really happy, for the first time in years. Your grandpa is eyeing me, "leave it alone, boy." He shouts. I half smile and he is waving that knife at me and warning me not to touch that pie on the window cill. He is coming towards the house in the suspenders he's had on since the First World War. Then he passes me and greets gram inside. They are laughing about something.

That old nag, she's a piece of work. She is jumping over fence posts and that woman is having a hell of a time just holding on. I sure wish you'd meet her sometime. She talks about you likes she knows you and I wish to hell she did.

 I'll still send this in the mailbox, I'll put your name on it, and a couple hundred stamps and maybe it will get to you. Maybe it will sit in an unmarked mailbox collecting dust for fifty years, or fall in the side of a lake and be caught by some fisher in New England, but then it still could still be at your door to greet you with a smile. If it does, if it gets to you, Malory, write back your daddy. He will be waiting. He will be in his rocking chair, eating your gram's blueberry pie--while no one watches.