Silver Springs: A Holiday Love Story

You Won't Forget Me

Santa Monica, California
Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, November 24, 2022
(10:00 am)
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"Remember when Robin and Will used to go out into the yard at the old house with balloons and play float?"

As Stevie lay in her husband's arms on top of the rumpled bedding from the night before, she was thinking of Thanksgivings past at their house in the Pacific Palisades, when the kids were small and Will still divided his time between households after Kristen had paid her debt to society and achieved her mental health goals and regained custody of her son. She'd married a equestrian like herself and had two daughters, LeeLee and Stella, in rapid succession, and she'd driven Will in every Wednesday night before Thanksgiving to spend the weekend eating Barbara Nicks' deliciously fattening foods and creating mischief with his sister Robin in their uncomfortable dressy clothes. But before the velvet dresses and suits went on, Robin and Will, still in Sesame Street pajamas and socks, would make Lindsey blow up balloons and tie them to gift ribbon from Stevie's wrapping drawer and go out into the backyard to "play float", which meant they'd let the wind carry their balloons as they'd play marching music on the CD player outside and pretend they were carrying floats in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Robin and Will were born just six weeks apart and had spent a lot of time together in cribs and playpens and learning not to put Play Dough in their mouths on Stevie's living room floor, and they had been best friends all their lives.

Those were the memories she knew Lindsey had been talking about when they'd cried their way back to bed to hold each other a little longer before the holiday began, talk out their fears and maybe even reach a decision about his treatment.

"I remember blowing up all those balloons till I was dizzy," was Lindsey's response, with a laugh. Tucked away in Phoenix in a warehouse among Stevie's roughly fifty-five years of demos were VHS tapes of Robin and Will, squealing on the Santa Monica shore with wet, sandy plastic pails in their tiny hands, of the Christmas mornings when gifts were still tagged in print for kids' eyes to read "Love, Santa", of two kids on bicycles with training wheels in Mick's driveway in Hawaii, and of Stevie and Lindsey, Christopher Nicks manning the camera, stealing kisses among the chaos at the Thanksgiving table as turkey was carved and wine was poured and Barbara made everyone say why they were thankful.

They had spent twenty-five years pressing record buttons to document their dream coming true.

"We're not done making memories, Linds," Stevie said, lying with her side compressed to his and her hand across his stomach with her chin resting on it, looking up into the same blue eyes she'd lost herself in over fifty years ago like walking into the ocean. "I am well aware that we got a later start than most people with those kinds of memories...we were out making other ones for thirty years before that...but there's more out there for us, you know...even in this room...even if all we can do for the last ten or fifteen years is lie here together in this bed and gradually go blinder till the TV becomes like the radio...those memories would still be beautiful, sweetheart, because they would be of us." She could feel the tears starting again. "The way I see it, we started this thing together in a bedroom fifty-two years ago and we will end it that way, two old and veiny hands clasped together as we drift off together and every person and animal we've lost along the way is there to greet us and we hear them playing 'Crystal' to welcome us home." She could see his tears threatening their own return as well as her own. "You're not done, Linds...and I'm not done lying next to you every night and looking into your eyes every morning." She sighed shakily and said, smiling sadly, "That's where I stand, that's my story. The end."

Lindsey, who hadn't said much, looked down into the tearful brown eyes he'd fallen into like a trap door to Wonderland over fifty years before. He thought of the opening lyrics to her song "Gold And Braid", which she'd written about their relationship decades ago - "Though deep-set, somewhat shadowed, her eyes, her mystery...That's not so different from the way that he said, Don't hide behind your eyes that way, baby.'" Since they had reunited for real twenty-five years earlier as they'd also reunited Fleetwood Mac for The Dance, they had become two very different people in the way they related to each other...or, rather, the same people, the ones they had been in the beginning, when all they had were twelve demos, and little white dog and a mattress on the floor. Stevie no longer hid behind anything - not her eyes or hair like in the song, not drugs, not other men designed to make him jealous, not her music, not her independent streak or even her collection of capes. Lindsey no longer shouted or became possessive or withdrew and holed up behind the control boards of a recording studio, no longer got jealous and dark and threw accusations around. They had come together knowing this was it, their second chance, the chance to spend their lives together in the dream that Stevie had titled "Silver Springs" in a song long ago. He wasn't done yet either.

"It's going to be tough when I get out," he said, and he watched his wife's eyes fill with tears as she realized that was his way of saying he would have the surgery.

"We're worth about a hundred million apiece," Stevie said, smiling through her tears. "We can definitely figure out how to get you up and running again."

Lindsey sighed, leaning his head back against the pillows. "I wonder what Mick Jagger does with all of his money," he said, and he smiled as Stevie erupted into laughter and scrambled up higher on the bed to kiss him, her hands cradling his face as their lips met and he tasted her tears. Their lips touched and parted again and again, just silly pecks, but then they got longer, deeper, and she felt his tongue teasing along her lower lip and welcomed him in, their mouths soon locked together as they shared a deep, tender, romantic kiss that made both of them moan just a little, made them breathless when they were done.

"My God, Linds..." Stevie dropped her face to his chest for a moment to recover, her head spinning.

"Hey, it is still us, after all," he said, and he heard her muffled giggle as his fingers dug into her golden curls and he kissed her hair at the crown. He whispered down at her. "Hey Stevie...we really should get it all in before I'm out of commission for awhile...you know...like a going-out-of-business sale."

Stevie giggled again, looking up at him. She traced her finger along the side of his face. "Mmmm...dirty old man, I see...on Thanksgiving morning too...feeling thankful, are you?"

In one smooth motion, Lindsey switched positions so that Stevie lay against the pillows on her back and he hovered over her, his hand gliding along the side of her body in her old silk robe, which he'd touched countless times before. "For you? Every day of my life, sweet girl." And he lowered his lips onto hers again as she wrapped him in her arms.

While he was still relatively healthy and before the chaos of the day ahead with the holiday began, Lindsey slowly undid the sash of the old black silk robe that felt like home beneath his touch and made slow, tender, passionate love to the beautiful girl he had loved all his adult life.

He knew they were not done making memories.

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