“Take care of yourself,” she said, and she hugged me good-bye, leaving me with Mother’s journal and my own choices.

The New Cinderella
By Ellie Eddington
Nine Years Old

The Torn Poem Found in Lillian Caulfield Eddington’s Journal

“What You Feel Like”

You feel like … all I’ve ever wanted.

You feel like … my meant-to-be; my all; my destiny; my happy ending.

You feel like … my love story that changed the world.

You feel like … what I’ve always wanted and didn’t know I wanted.

You feel like … the one I’ve been waiting for.

You feel like … the destination to which all my roads have finally led.

You feel like … you live in my heart and you’ll never leave; home; my forever.

You feel like … what they all call love; the lock and the key—both.

You feel like … my softest place; mine; my gentlest heartbeat.

You feel like … you’ve embedded yourself into my soul.

You feel like … the reward for making it this far, being this brave.

You feel like … the answer to every prayer—every one.

You are … . . . the reason for everything that came before.

Twelve

Twelve

Bayside seemed built for just this: complete loss of time and self. I don’t know if that was the founder’s goal, and I didn’t have to give in to it, but this gift was there for the taking. I resisted the making of the list. Oh, the list—I wanted to make one for all the things I needed to accomplish that first day. I should have taken the pen out of the house just like you’d remove the liquor bottle from the house of an alcoholic.

During that morning, I’d called Rusty four times, but there wasn’t an answer.

I hung up, frustrated, and then drove into town. The unexpected and sudden appearance of the bay from behind trees and street signs took my breath away when I rounded a corner and wasn’t ready for the sight of sunlight’s sequins spread across the waves.

I thought of Mother in Bayside and then in Atlanta; I wondered what those two very separate lives looked like. I needed to see her on Peachtree Street, at the Piedmont Driving Club, in her house wearing a dress with a ribbon around the middle. A timeline would help me—an artistic timeline built of her days in ’60 and ’61. Other people found meaning inside their words, but I discovered mine within drawing. I’d get to the bookstore and dig up a book about Atlanta history, but my first stop was to buy the vegetables Birdie asked me to pick up at Pappy’s Vegetable Stand, which Birdie told me was “the absolute only place to buy fresh veggies.”

The minute I met Pappy, I smiled; he was older than anyone I’d personally known.