The Distance Between Us

Introduction

   Evelyn Jacobs had always appreciated the small things. Even as a young woman during the Great Depression, she still took the time to pick flowers from the field next to her home while she watched the clouds. At seventy-one she hadn't slowed down at all. She still picked flowers and watched the clouds. When a storm was blowing in she would sit on the porch swing of the home she had lived in her entire life.
   That very porch swing was where she had once spent hours with Alexander Williams, talking about all of the little things in life. He had sang her beautiful songs and played her beautiful music on his saxophone on that little porch. He was the reason that she had such a deep love for music.
   Evelyn was born and raised in the soulful city of New Orleans. She grew up with the sounds of jazz coming from the streets and the smell of gumbo in the air. At one time she could tell you exactly which key the bands were playing in, even if they were blocks away. Alexander had taught her so much about the beauty of music in their days together.
   Alexander Williams had lived in a poor house for the better part of his life. His mother had passed when he was a young boy, leaving behind his infant sister and himself for their father to care for. He had been raised in French Quarter of New Orleans, a neighborhood that was full of all the things a child should never be exposed to.
   Ms. Evers, the kind older woman that ran the poor house, did what she could to make his childhood as normal as possible. She would occasionally slip him a few pennies here and there for some candies. She often danced around the parlor with him to take his mind from the darkness around him. She would play the piano and sing beautiful songs from her youth, the music fascinated Alexander.
   One day when he was seven, he asked if she would teach him. She promptly moved over on the bench and told him to sit. He worked on piano for a half hour every day after that. When he was eleven, Ms. Evers gave him her late husbands' saxophone and taught him what she could. She was the reason he loved music.
   When he met Evelyn something ignited inside of him, her love for the little things was so new and beautiful to him. He had never had the luxury of laying in fields of flowers and watching the skies, all he had was his music. She taught him how to lay back and let your worries fade away and he taught her how to fill the room with the sound of a piano and her voice. He opened her eyes to the hardships of some lives and she taught him to find the beauty within those hardships. Above everything else though, they taught each other how to love.