Lost Love Letters: An Indie Chicks Anthology

An Indie Chicks Anthology

Compiled by Cheryl Shireman

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Copyright 2014 Still Waters Publishing, LLC.

The authors in this collection retain and hold their individual and respective rights to their pieces.

Published by Still Waters Publishing, LLC.

Published in ebook format, January 2014

EPUB Version

ISBN-10: 1-62566-039-1

ISBN-13: 978-1-62566-039-8

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

Cover art by Paul Beeley of Create Imaginations.  createimaginations.co.uk

This book was formatted by CyberWitch Press  cyberwitchpress.com

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Introduction

Love letter - what phrase conjures up more intense feelings than that simple phrase? Most of us have received a love letter. Many of us have written a love letter. Some of those letters were tucked away in the bottom of a drawer. Others were ripped to shreds or destroyed in symbolic flames. Whatever their fate, the one characteristic all love letters share is their raw and intense honesty. When we are declaring our love to another, we are speaking straight from the heart. Such words are precious because they capture a true moment in time. Whether a love lasts or not, in that moment, those words are real and sincere.

Last year, when the talented women writers of Indie Chicks were thinking about the subject of our next anthology, Barbara Silkstone came up with the idea of a compilation of love letters. Immediately, we all responded with enthusiasm. But what kind of love letters should be included in this anthology? There are many kinds of love letters - sweet and innocent; frank and honest; torrid and steamy; or sad and full of regret. What type of letters should we include in such a book? We tossed around some ideas and eventually came up with this one - Lost Love Letters. These are the long-overdue love letters we never got around to writing. The recipient might be a first love, a child, a parent, a favorite aunt, or the one that got away. The subject was wide open, and the instruction was simple - pour your heart out. And so we did.

I hope you enjoy these letters. Be prepared to smile and remember your own loves. Be prepared to glimpse into the hearts of many women. Be prepared to cry.

And, when you are finished, nothing could make us happier than if you took the time to write your own Lost Love Letter. The best time to share love is always now.

Cheryl Shireman

Creator of the Indie Chicks Anthologies and Indie Chicks Café

Visit us at indiechickscafe.com

If you do write a letter, stop by the Café and tell us about it!

Table of Contents

Georgina Young-Ellis: Dear Danny.................................1

Consuelo Saah-Baehr: Dear David..................................7

Peg Brantley: Dear Shirley Jean.....................................13

Sibel Hodge: To My Darling Child................................19

Barbara Silkstone: To My First Love.............................25

Lia Fairchild: Dear Brother.............................................35

Melissa Smith: My Grumpy...........................................39

Faith Mortimer: To My Darling Daughter...................45

Sarah Woodbury: To My Daughter..............................49

Gerry McCullough: Darling Davy................................53

Tonya Kappes: My Eddy................................................57

Donna Fasano: Dear Jake................................................63

Karin Cox: Dear Foetus...................................................67

Heather Marie Adkins: Dear Cory................................71

Lynn Hubbard: Dear Aunt Susie...................................79

Lisa Vandiver: Dear Mom..............................................87

Cheryl Shireman: To My Beloved Children.................93

Christy Hayes: Dear Peggy B. .....................................101

Mary Pat Hyland: Dear George F. ..............................105

Penelope Crowe: Dear Michael....................................113

Kat Flannery: Dear Miss Austen..................................115

Katherine Owen: Dear JT..............................................119

Linda Barton: Dear Grandma.......................................123

Cheryl Bradshaw: To Tiffany.......................................131

Louise Voss: Dear John.................................................135

Christine Nolfi: Dear Dad.............................................143

Shanon Grey: Dear Mom..............................................151

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Georgina Young- Ellis

Dear Danny,

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Your life was too short. I thought one day I’d hear you had become the famous guitarist of some famous rock band. I fantasized we’d meet—perhaps on one of my visits coming home to Tucson from college. You’d be in town having just returned from a tour. By that time, I imagined I was better looking than I had been at seventeen when we were together. My body had filled out a little, my hair was long with bangs: that Marianne Faithful look. I’d see you across the room, maybe in one of those bars on 4th Avenue. Your hair would be long too, as it always was. You might have been working out, and you’d be strong, but slim like a true rocker, and more handsome than ever. You’d see me. You’d smile, surprised, and walk toward me. We’d hardly have to speak. We’d just know, now that a few years had passed, we wanted each other again.

I remember when you broke up with me in the park on Sarnoff Drive, about a month after I graduated from high school and you were going on to be a senior. You told me you weren’t attracted to me anymore, and broke my heart like I didn’t know it could be broken. I’d never been in love—I think you made me fall in love with you. You were the first person who ever called me beautiful. We were standing in the light booth in the Drama Department’s theater. We hadn’t started going out yet. It was about a month before prom and I already had a date...a boyfriend whom I sort-of liked. I was looking at the stage through the window, adjusting the lights. You were standing next to me, looking at me. All of a sudden you said it: You’re so beautiful. You wrote me songs and poems. No one had ever written anything to me before. You wooed me, you were cute, I fell for you.

I broke up with the boyfriend on prom night and you and I saw each other the next day—our first date, in the company of my best friend Ginger, the three of us hanging out on 4th Ave. I bought that baby blue Led Zeppelin T-shirt. For the next two months you wrote me more poems and songs. We made out in my car or in your room. I remember how you’d put a record on, Jimi Hendrix, for instance, and after listening to a song just once, could play the guitar part perfectly. I thought you were a genius. I remember thinking how sad it was that your parents, especially your awful step-father, didn’t appreciate that. You bought me the Heart album I wanted, for a graduation present. You were into Fleetwood Mac, but me, not so much. We both adored Zeppelin, Hendrix, Joplin...Rush.

Before I met you, I had already made plans to leave Tucson for a year to travel. Those plans couldn’t be changed, so we talked about what we would do when we were apart. How we would manage for that year, though I’d be home at Christmas. I thought we would be together forever. Then, that night in the park, you told me you didn’t love me anymore. How does a person fall in and out of love in two months time? That was all we had together, two months. I was devastated. I was despondent. My mother didn’t know what to do with me. I played Piece of my Heart over and over. I was destroyed. I didn’t understand. I thought you’d come around. Then I left town and began my year of traveling, but all I could think of was you. When I got back to Tucson after that, I came to see you in the record store you were working in and we talked like friends, but I could see you weren’t interested. I kept wondering what I could do to make you fall in love with me again.

For another year, in which I started dating again, I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Finally I went away to school in New York—came home on vacation this hip, sophisticated girl. I saw you playing in a band in Choo Choo’s on 4th Ave. We saw each other from across the room. You looked strong, your hair was long but well cut, you were more handsome than ever. You came toward me, we spoke, but you didn’t see how beautiful I’d become. You would never fall in love with me again. It was the last time I saw you.

Several years later, after I was married and had a baby, I learned you had died of AIDS. This disease had already claimed many of the dear friends I’d had in New York. It seemed to haunt me. And now you. Why? Was it drugs? I heard you’d been living with an older woman. But, were you actually gay, or bi-sexual, or had you been experimenting? Somehow I was sure it was drugs...needles, to be more specific.

There’s a certain lack of closure when your first love dies so young. You go on with your life, happy perhaps, in love with someone else perhaps, but always wanting to be looked at again with those eyes that first saw you as beautiful. I still need to tell you how much you meant to me, how important it was to be loved like that at seventeen. To remember those days we had together as the happiest of my young life.

I wish this letter could be good-bye, but I realize now, I can never say good-bye to you.

From across time and space,

G

Georgina Young-Ellis

Georgina lives in Queens, New York with her artist husband and musician son. She is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, and was a stage actress for many years. Born and raised in the Southwest of the U.S, she went to school in New York City, graduating from New York University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater.

Georgina writes The Time Mistress Series: romantic, time-travel novels, spiced with adventure. The first book in the series is The Time Baroness, set in Jane Austen's England. The next is The Time Heiress, which takes place in pre-Civil War New York City, and the third, The Time Contessa, takes the reader to Renaissance Italy. Georgina is also a screenwriter, journalist, film/theater critic