He Told Me To Walk This Way

Let It Go, Let It Go

I won’t lie. That night when I got home, up in my bedroom at my mom’s house I did cry. I cried a lot actually. But somehow it felt different to all the other times I’d ever cried in my life. Every other time I’d cried a lot, it hurt and felt like I’d never stop. Somehow I knew that after this long, hard, painful, cry, I would never cry again. I would be happy. To me, it seemed like this was the final step in letting go of Steven. He could never hurt me again.

Sure Angie and my mom tried to comfort me. But I really just wanted to be alone.

After showering and slipping into bed that night, I was fine. I sighed just before falling asleep and tried not think about Steven again.

I had to learn to hate him.

But that was pretty hard to do when, no matter what, I couldn’t stop hearing his beautiful voice singing me to sleep in my mind.

*Eleven Years Later*

It’s now August of 1985; the Done With Mirrors tour is just about to begin.

“Mommy, are we almost home?”

“Yes we are, Ellie. But you should be able to tell by looking out your window honey. See? We’ve just passed Grandma’s house.” I said as my daughter and I drove past my mom’s house; the house I’d grown up in.

Ellie flashed a toothy smile. She was growing up so fast. I can still remember teaching her to walk, and picking her up when she fell down. I can still remember her first words and changing diapers in the middle of the night. But now she was ten years old, and such a bright young girl. She was at the age where she put up a fight in the mornings about what she wore to school, and she even had a specific taste in music. She had gotten wild, untamable brown hair that hadn’t come from my side of the family, along with beautiful brown eyes that seemed to be laced with green. Those two features sometimes reminded me of Steven…but that was in the past.

“Mommy, turn this up! I love this song so much!”

It took me a minute to recognize the tune, but I soon realized that it was Aerosmith’s Gypsy Boots, from their new album.My first instinct was to immediately turn the radio off. See, Ellie had no idea who her father was. She certainly didn’t know that the guy who sang this song that she loved was her dad.

I did as she said and turned the car radio up two notches.

Ellie belted out the lyrics from the backseat as I pulled up in front of our small duplex. I kept the car running so I could listen to Ellie sing.

Her voice sounded remarkably like Steven’s.

Shut up, I told myself.

“Mommy, isn’t this band called Aerosmith?”

She must have heard it on MTV. I shuddered, trying to hold back any detectable emotion at the mention of their name.

“A-Aerosmith, yeah. They came out when I was a teenager.” I said, sniffling.

Through the rear view mirror I saw her eyes glisten as she said, “I think the guitar player, Joe Perry is sooo cute!”

I didn’t answer her…I couldn’t. I knew if I tried that I would start crying. I sniffled lightly, trying to hold back the tears.

“You okay mommy?”

I smiled at how Ellie was always able to pick up on the slightest tension in anyone’s mood.

“I’m fine, baby” I said, turning the car off after the song ended. I helped Ellie unbuckle her seatbelt and led her inside our small house.

An hour later Ellie and I were seated at the tiny table that barely fit in our even tinier kitchen. I had made a pot of spaghetti along with garlic bread. It was easy to see how Ellie grew as fast as she did if you saw how much she ate. Two helpings of spaghetti later, Ellie suddenly looked up at me and smiled.