Silver Springs: A Holiday Love Story

Your Shining Autumn Ocean Crashing

Santa Monica, California
Thanksgiving Day
Thursday, November 24, 2022
(2:30 pm)
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"Hey, kid! Long time no see, birthday buddy!"

John McVie greeted his goddaughter with a hug as soon as she got off the elevator and Lily and Luna ran to her feet, barking in harmony at her arrival. With their birthdays so close together there was usually a separate cake for Uncle John at her parties, especially on tour, they had been calling each other birthday buddies for years. Uncle John kept a lot to himself, but he had been nothing but sweet to her since the day she was born, and she knew how much he cared for her parents. Robin had just learned to read years ago when she'd looked through her parents' wedding album one day and seen a photo of her mom being dipped on the dance floor by Uncle John with a caption in her mother's joyful, bubbly cursive, reading, "Save me a dance at your wedding..." ~ John McVie. Stevie had gotten tearful when she'd held up the book and asked her what that caption meant. It wasn't until years later, after Stevie had shared the story about Will's mom and the red roses in the dressing room that she'd understood.

"Hi, Uncle John." She noticed his wife rise from the couch to great her and she hugged her too. "Hi, Aunt Julie. Did Molly come with you?"

"No, she's at her in-laws' this year," said Julie McVie. "Hey, your mom played us the demo of your song the day she got home from Alabama and the Halloween show...good stuff, Robin!"

"Thanks." She looked around and saw the National Dog Show playing on TV on mute as Frank Sinatra on the sound system sang "The Last Dance"; it was tradition that Stevie play Sinatra on the holiday in honor of Grandpa Jess. "Where's the gypsy?"

A squeaky rasp sounded out from behind the kitchen wall and over the breakfast bar. "In the kitchen...remaining! Get in here, kid; I've only got two hands!"

Robin would normally have laughed at what passed for "I love you" between her mother and herself, but she was too busy being stunned. It's like last night never happened! She was beginning to believe those tales Aunt Christine used to tell about her much-younger parents shouting obscenities and insults at each other in sound studios and hotel elevators across the world, then laughing hysterically and sleeping in each other's rooms minutes later.

She found Stevie in the kitchen, red reindeer oven mitts on with her usual black uniform, trying to blow air up to the long blonde waves that were getting in her face as she bent to take naked sweet potatoes with marshmallows out of the hot oven and stave off two rambunctious little dogs from the heat with the heel of her gray Ugg boot. Her mother was a sight to behold! She laughed and shooed the dogs away and caught the tip of an oven mitt to force her mother's hand up so the foil pan landed safely on top stovetop. "Which one is harder, Mom? Being Stevie Nicks or Stephanie Buckingham?"

"Depends on which shoes I'm wearing," said Stevie. Still in her oven mitts, Stevie pulled her daughter into a hug that was so filled with emotion Robin was kind of frightened. "I love you, baby girl," she whispered into her daughter's long golden waves that made her a dead ringer for 1977 Stevie Nicks. "I'm sorry you had to hear all that shit last night."

"It's okay, Mom." Robin returned her mother's tight squeeze. "I know."

"Your brother is coming at, like, four, so we'll eat when he gets here," Stevie said as she let Robin out of her freakishly strong grasp. "Hey...how are you two today? Will texted Daddy these exact words - he wrote 'hung over af' with that emotion picture thing that's a screwed up happy face from the Seventies."

Robin laughed out loud and said, "Mom! Emojis!"

Stevie waved an oven mitt playfully in her face. "Newfangled bullshit that's removed all romance and class from the world," she said. "How 'hung over af' are you, Robin Christine?"

"Damn...middle-naming me! Am I grounded?" Robin laughed again.

"Nope...just wanted to know if you'd be needing this!"

Robin watched as Stevie extracted two clean juice glasses from the open dishwasher and filled each one with a shot of tequila. She handed one to her daughter and said, "Hair of the dog, baby girl! That's how we did it in '77!" They clinked glasses and drank their tequila. Stevie added, "And in '78, '79, '80, '81...a whole lot in '82..." She giggled to herself and then looked up to see her daughter's trying-not-to-cry face. She recognized it instantly because looking at her daughter was like looking in a mirror from the past. She touched Robin's arm, still in one oven mitt. "Hey, kid...it's going to be okay. Daddy and I fought it out and then avoided it and then talked it through lying in bed this morning...true-to-form Stevie-and-Lindsey stuff. We worked it out, no one is mad...and he's getting the surgery after the holidays."

"Seriously?" Stevie watched tears fill the ocean blue eyes her daughter had inherited from the love of her life.

"Seriously," Stevie said. "We're going to have Thanksgiving like Buckinghams, have a great day together with Uncle John and Aunt Julie...and actually Waddy, who said he was coming by later today and maybe Aunt Sharon...and after your birthday next week, the bullshit starts. We talked it all out, I swear."

"It's freaking me out, Mom," Robin admitted tearfully. "I forget you two are older because you're so rock-and-roll, you know? Jeez...why couldn't you have had me at twenty-six or something?"

"Because the year I was twenty-six your father and I were splitting a single cheeseburger from Bob's Big Boy for dinner and I was cleaning houses and waiting tables all day while Uncle Richard and your dad sat around in a cloud of marijuana smoke in our tiny apartment making my poems into demos."

Both women laughed at the accuracy of that memory and Stevie refilled their tequila glasses. Robin looked at the drinks and up to her mother's big, soulful brown eyes. Stevie was trying to put a positive spin on things, but looking at her mother was like looking into a mirror from the future. Stevie was scared to death. It was in her eyes.

"Bottoms up, kid," said Stevie. "You can be hung over tomorrow on Black Friday. Today we celebrate life!"

As if on cue, Lindsey emerged from the bedroom, folding his glasses into the breast pocket of the black shirt he wore with jeans and holding up his phone.

"My mirror image is on his way!" he announced, and they knew he meant Will, who looked as much like Lindsey as Robin did Stevie. "Dinner will actually be on time!" Noticing his daughter, he walked toward the kitchen with his arms outstretched and said, "Come here, kiddo! Happy Turkey!"

"Happy Thanksgiving, Daddy," Robin said her father's arms. Damn, Will was right, she thought. He feels like skin and bones.

"Stevie, I'm livening up the joint," Lindsey said on his way to the stereo. "Have we honored Jess with Sinatra enough?"

"Go ahead, sweetheart," Stevie said from the kitchen. Robin was halfway between her parents in the dining area when the Frank Sinatra stopped and she suddenly heard a song her dad used to play on the car radio when she was a little girl, when he was home from touring and they'd have a standing date for father-daughter pancakes on Saturday mornings and he'd speed down PCH to the restaurant with the sunroof open and sing along, tapping out the beat on the steering wheel in the sunshine.

"I just want to celebrate, yeah yeah...another day of living...yeah!...I just want to celebrate another day of liiiiiiiiiiiiiife..."

Lindsey had the remote to the stereo in his hand as he air-guitared and sang along, and everyone in the room was smiling. Robin looked over at her mother, who stood near the kitchen and tried to smile too, but went back into the kitchen. Robin's heart suddenly leapt to her throat.

She knew Stevie had gone into the kitchen so none of them - especially Lindsey - would see her cry.

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