Letters to Maggie

My dearest Maggie,

Today I woke with only the thought of you. A whispering memory from years ago. I must have relived it in my sleep. Do you remember when, we were just kids, running through the sunflowers? I do. I remember it as vividly as ever. How the warm summer sun, kissed your maple colored skin. How the gentle breeze blew through your curls. I can still hear the melody, that is your laugh.

That was the day, I knew I had fallen in love with you. We were only kids then, with no care in the world; free and uncomplicated by the means of political correctness.

I wish I could live in that memory forever. But not all wishes can be granted.

I am apologetic that I have not had the time to write to you sooner. Since I went back home after that night we shared. My folks put me to work. I spent dawn till dusk everyday for months fixing up cars in my father's shop. I guess hard labor was supposed to change my mind about how I feel about you. When the war broke out, the next morning, I went straight to the enlistment office.

I enlisted, for a few reasons, but most importantly I did it in the hopes that when I came home I would see you again. I must be naive. I just have this great hope that if I service my country, when I return home we can truly be together. Just you and me, against the world.

It must be nice, to live in a world where love is treated as a right, rather than a privilege. Though I cannot imagine my love for you being anything short of both of those things. I just wish others can see what I see and not just the tones of our skin.

But is that not the whole point? Now that we have gone to war, I see how we are all divided. I see how much hate the world has, derived from ignorance. I believe this war is going to change us. That when it's done, we will be better for it.

The days have dragged on since we last met. At night, I would go to our secret place. I'd stare up at the great moon and wonder if you were seeing its same face, wherever you were. It might be silent on my end, as I rarely have the time to sit down and scribble these words to you. Let alone have the time to change my socks. The men here don’t have much. We rely on care packages sent from our women in waiting. Some of the men here are kind enough to share, as I have yet to receive a package from you. I am hopeful that it will come in due time. I hope with every fiber of my being that you will receive this letter. And have it in your heart to respond to me. For I am just a man, fighting for my right to a better world. One where I can spend the rest of my life loving the most beautiful woman in total peace. Just know, that in my silence, my heart and mind have been loud with the image of you. I so badly want things to be different, But until then, I can promise my best to fight, my way back to you.

I will try to write to you more frequently. I can hardly wait to read your reply. More so, I cannot wait to gaze into your honey colored eyes once more.

Till next time, my love.

—Travis.

Maggie, reread and reread that letter over and over. She ran her fingers across the scribbled handwriting that once belonged to the only man she loved. By the time she had received all of Travis's lovely letters, it was too late. Her mother, who had kept all of his letters hidden away in a shoe box for decades finally, on her death bed, decided to give the letters to Maggie. Hoping that coming clean would save her from the sins she had committed in an attempt to keep her family safe from the hands of those who segregated her family in every aspect of life. She knew that had she allowed her gentle daughter to marry a white man, that she would face trials and tribulations that she simply was too soft to handle.

Maggie, who had accepted long ago, that Travis was just a boy who once was had moved on. She took her mother's advice to marry Marcus, a young man who was the son of a reverend at her mother's church. Even though she loved her husband, she always had an ache in her heart. A pain that whenever she saw a young brown haired man, with blue eyes and slim features, caused her to lose her breath. She would dream about the days she walked in the sunflower with Travis. He was always in her mind. And sometimes the smallest, arbitrary things would bring his memory roaring to life like the crashing surf against a rocky shore.

She at on the corner of her bed, and held the letters, all 168 of them. Going from 1942 to 1960.

Maggie was in her old age now. Her beauty had escaped her as gravity and child-bearing took its toll. Her face was no longer the smooth brown sugared canvas it had been when she knew Travis.

“Are you ready nan?” Maggie's granddaughter, Elle, entered the room.

Elle had discovered the box of letters while she helped her mother Grace clean out her grandfather's belongings after he passed away last summer. Elle in her own life had fallen in love with a white boy. And she felt it was her duty to figure out what had happened to her grandmother's lost love. She spent weeks tracking down the author of these letters to find that he was still alive, and still just as madly in love with Maggie as he was all those years ago in the 1940s.

Maggie sighed and carefully placed the letters in the box sitting next to her on the bed. “All these years, I thought he didn’t love me. That he abandoned me.” A single tear fell down her face. “When my mother gave me these, she told me he was dead.”

Elle closed the space between her grandmother and herself. Placing a hand on her grandmother’s. “He’s not dead nan, He has been waiting for you all this time.”

Maggie smiled and gripped Elle's hand hard. “What if he doesn’t remember who I am? What if he doesn’t think I’m beautiful anymore.”

Elle sighed. “Well, you will never know if you don't try!” A line that Maggie coined, having told that to all of her five children and 15 grandchildren.

Together, Maggie, her eldest daughter Grace, and Elle left the small North Carolina town to travel the short distance it took to Charlotte to a retirement home where Travis now resided.

Maggie’s nerves made her feel like she had a swarm of bees buzzing around inside her body. Her heart felt like it was going to implode the closer they got to him.

Once there, Elle and Grace handled signing them in as visitors. “It’s alright momma.” Grace reassured Maggie, as she placed the visitor sticker on her dress.

“I don’t know if I can do this.” Maggie knew that if he rejected her she would die from the heart break.

Holding hands with her children, Maggie followed the nurse into the entertainment room of the the home, where a few other elderly people played chess or watched TV.

“He always sits by the bay windows.” The nurse said.

“He loves to look at the sunflowers in the garden.”

And there, as they turned the corner, was Travis. Sitting and gazing out the large window. His chestnut brown hair was now a snow white color. But it was him all the same.

Maggie’s breath hitched as she laid eyes on her soul mate, after nearly 80 years, time seemed to stand still.

“Mr. Prescott.” The nurse approached him, and rubbed his shoulder to gain his attention.

“Leave me alone. I’m busy.” He grumbled. But it wasn’t in a mean way. More in a way that sounded defeated.

“Mr. Prescott, you have some visitors that would like to see you.”

Travis turned his head, and said, “Visitors, no one ever comes to see me.”

As he finished his sentence, his eyes found their way to Maggie. Standing in the room. Just feet away from him.

“Travis.” Maggie’s voice was small and shy.

Travis stood up. And slowly walked over to his soul mate.

“It's really you! After all this time!”

“It’s really me.” Tears began to fall from them both, as they embraced their arms around one another for the first time since Maggie was 16 years old.

“I always knew you’d come back to me!” Travis wept into Maggie.

“I’m home now!” Maggie whispered as she leaned into him.

“We’re home.”