Scattered Scribblings

Sasha woke up with a ray of sunshine stabbing into her eyes.  She looked at her phone – 9am.  It was unusual for her to sleep that late, but between the storm and thinking about her mom, she hadn’t slept well.  

​There were so many memories here at the lake house, and every single one of them included her mother.  It had been just Sasha and Mom for years, ever since Dad passed away when she was sixteen.  It felt unfair to lose her mom too.  But life wasn’t fair, and the cancer had been too far advanced by the time they found it.

​The smell of fresh coffee filled the house.  Sasha poured herself a cup and stepped outside to assess the storm damage.  The yard was a disaster.  Tree limbs and trash were everywhere.  One of the neighbors must be missing a lawn chair because she didn’t recognize the one in front of her.

​A thorough inspection of the house’s exterior did not reveal any noticeable damage.  Even so, she would lose today setting the yard to rights.  There was enough work to do at the house that she was going to need to find another week to come back and finish getting it ready to sell.

​Not feeling quite ready to begin the physical work of tidying the yard, Sasha carried her coffee down to the lake.  When she reached the beach, she took off her shoes so she could feel the damp, cool sand between her toes.  

​In the calm after the storm, the surface of the lake was like a sheet of glass.  A feeling of peace washed over Sasha as she sat down in the sand.  She dug her toes in until her feet were buried.  Coffee in one hand, she placed her other palm flat on the ground and leaned back.

​Sasha continued slowly sipping her coffee as she listened to the sounds of nearby birds.  She wanted to drag this moment out, make it last, because once it was over the rest of the day would be spent working hard and tiring herself out. 

​She burrowed her toes deeper into the sand.  There was something hard under the ball of her right foot.  It was very smooth, and what she could fell of its shape didn’t feel like a rock.  She put her coffee mug down on the sand so she could use her hands to dig the object out.

​It was a corked wine bottle, filled just over halfway with sand.  It was hard to tell through the dark glass, but it looked like there might be something else inside, something long and thin.  Sasha decided to take it back to the house with her.  She was certain that her mom had kept several openers in the house.

​After a brief search, Sasha had a bottle opener in hand.  She managed to get the cork pulled out and poured a bit of the sand into her hand.  She peered into the opening of the bottle.  It appeared that someone had rolled a sheet of paper up very tightly and then poured the sand in to weight the bottle. 

​She poured the sand out into a bowl, then gently shook the bottle to encourage the paper to come out.  Someone had written a letter and sealed it in the wine bottle.

 

Dear Missy,

Happy 37th birthday! I’ve been writing you these letters for thirty-seven years.  Maybe I’m a grandma and I don’t even know it – what a thought!

I pray to God every day that you have a good life. The two times that I was able to see you in person you seemed happy.  I am so grateful to your adoptive parents because they gave you what I couldn’t have when you were born.

This will probably be the last letter that I write.  The doctor found cancer, and it’s advanced enough that they can’t do much more than try to make me comfortable.  I’m so tired all the time, and I have to force myself to eat.

I wish that I had more time.  I wish I could see you one more time.  I haven’t even told your sister yet.  I don’t know how.  But it needs to be soon because the doctors say I only have four or five months.

I’m sorry that this last letter is full of bad news.  So I’ll end with something good.  I love you! I will always be watching over you!

Love,

Mom

 

Sasha felt tears collecting in her eyes as she read the letter.  It reminded her so much of her mom – the late-stage cancer diagnosis, the short time the writer had left to live.  The handwriting even looked a lot like her mom’s handwriting.

She remembered when her mom told her about the diagnosis.  Mom had invited her here to the lake house for the weekend.  They had eaten a simple dinner together and then sat on their small sliver of beach to watch the sun set.  As the watched the sun go down beneath the horizon, her mom told her about the pancreatic cancer that was eating her up, told her that she had only months to live.  They held each other and cried.  They had been able to celebrate one last Thanksgiving together, but her mom was gone by Christmas.

The letter sounded so much like her mom, but Mom had never said anything about giving a baby up for adoption.  She wished it was possible to call her and talk about it.  If only she could hear her voice again.

 

Sasha wiped the sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her shirt.  After a day and a half of cleaning the yard, she had finally removed all of the storm debris.  September was unusually warm that year, and that day was even warmer than most.  Before she started any work inside the house, she was going to take a quick dip in the lake.  That would cool her down, as well as washing away the sweat and dirt of her morning’s labor. 

She found an old swimsuit tucked away in a dresser drawer in the room she always stayed in.  It still fit nicely.  She grabbed a towel and headed down to the beach.

The water was perfect.  It was nice and cool on her skin, rinsing the grime from her body.  She floated on her back and swam around for a bit before heading back towards the shore feeling refreshed.

As Sasha waded through the knee-deep water, she stepped on something hard.  Curious, she reached through the water and grasped the object that was just under the surface of the sand.  It was a win bottle very similar to the other she had found.  And like that other bottle, there appeared to be a message inside.

 

After getting comfortable on the couch, Sasha unrolled the letter she had removed from the new bottle and began to read.

Happy 8th birthday!

Dear Missy,

Hi sweetheart.  I wish I could celebrate with you today.  I would make you the prettiest cake, your favorite flavor.  And there would be lots of balloons and presents.  Even though I can’t be with you I’m celebrating with a pink-frosted cupcake.  I never forget your birthday!

You are getting so big! Your mom and dad sent a Christmas card to Grandma and Grampa this year, and it had a family picture in it.  It makes me so happy when I get to see those pictures. 

I have some exciting news – you have a baby sister! She is six months old now.  This is the first time that I’ve gone away over night without her.  But this time is for you and me, and her daddy will take good care of her.

I hope you have the best birthday ever!

Love,

Mom

It was another letter to the daughter that had been given up.  Reading this second letter, she started to really feel that this letter could have been written by her mom.  Taking into account when Mom got sick and doing the math, the timing of this letter would fit pretty closely for Sasha to have been the baby sister.

Coud it possibly be true? She had thought she was without family now, but maybe she had an older sister out there.  Surely her mom would have told her, but what she had read seemed to point to it as a real possibility. Then again, maybe she was just seeing what she wanted to see.

Either way, it didn’t really matter.  She had only a few small pieces of information to go on.  It wasn’t really enough to find this sister.  Besides, she still had a lot of work to do before the lake house would be ready to go on the market.

 

A sneeze exploded from Sasha, the result of all the dust she had stirred up digging through the basement.  This was the last box she planned to go through for the night.

There had been a small collection of them in the storage area of the small unfinished basement. Working through them was a slow job.  She found herself distracted by a hundred memories in each box. It was difficult choosing only a few sentimental items to keep before tossing the rest in the rented dumpster in the driveway.

As she dug through the box, she realized that it was full of her grandparents’ things.  There was a photo from their wedding, a copy of Sasha’s mother’s birth certificate, and a number of other mementos of their life together.

Looking through a stack of family photos, she came across one of people she didn’t recognize.  It was a couple in their forties.  They were smiling, and the woman was holding a baby who looked to be only a few months old.  She turned the photo over.  On the back was written “Missy’s first Christmas ’86.”

Sasha pulled the photo closer to her face, making sure she had read it correctly.  Then she flipped it back over to look at the family again. She stroked the baby in the photo with one finger.  Realizing she had stopped breathing, she made herself take a few deeps breaths.  She set the photo on the table and continued to stare at it.

Missy. Just like in the letters.  In a box of her grandparents’ things.  Her mom would have only been sixteen when Missy was born.  It made sense why she would have given her up.  The letters had to be from Mom.  But who was the couple in the photo?

 

It was Sasha’s last night at the lake house, at least for this trip.  Although she worked hard all week there was still a lot to do. She would need at least one more trip here to finish up before the house would be ready to sell.  She was exhausted.

The exhaustion wasn’t just physical, but mental as well.  Her mind had been stuck on the letters and photo that she had found.  For the last two days she had scoured both the house and the beach for further clues and found nothing.  At least trying to solve the mystery had kept her from dwelling too much on how she missed her mom.

The sun was getting low in the sky.  Sasha decided that she wanted to sit on the shore and watch the sun set, so she slipped her sandals on and headed for the beach.

As she approached the water, she noticed the sun glinting off of something just at the place where the water met the sand.  A bottle washed ashore.

It was another on! She desperately wanted to know what was inside, but she decided on a little delayed gratification.  She still wanted to watch the sunset.  

Once the sun was below the horizon, Sasha took the bottle and walked back to the house to see what she would find inside.

7/24/87

Dear Missy,

Happy birthday! I can’t believe you’re one year old already! I miss you so much, but I know that Mr. and Mrs. Thayer are taking great care of you.  I want you to have all the things that I wouldn’t be able to give you as a teenager with a kid.

I hope you understand one day why I let them adopt you.  Mrs. Thayer couldn’t have a baby, and Mr. Thayer was a friend of my dad from college.  And I was only sixteen. I didn’t give you up because I didn’t want or love you.  It was because I love you so much and you deserve everything they could give you that I couldn’t.

You will always be my daughter, my Missy.  You will be a part of me forever. I love you!

Love,

Mom

Missy Thayer.  Sasha even knew her birthdate.  Why did the name Thayer sound so familiar to her?  Something was there at the back of her mind.

It clicked.  The name was familiar because Miss Thayer had been a teacher in her high school.  Then she got married and became Mrs. Dillon.  Sasha never took a class with Miss Thayer, but she had English with Mrs. Dillon her junior and senior years.

Mel Dillon had been her favorite teacher.  She took Sasha under her wing when Sasha’s father died in her junior year.  They had bonded over the loss of a parent, as Mrs. Dillon’s mom had also died, only a few years prior.  Sasha had always thought Mel must be short for Melanie, but why not Melissa?  Melissa could be Mel or Missy, either one.

How would she confirm her suspicion that Mel Dillon was her sister? Ther had to be some way.  Then it came to her.  Social media.  Nearly everyone used it.  If she could find a social media profile with her birthdate listed, that would be her confirmation.

A quick internet search showed her what she needed to know.  There it was on her phone screen – Melissa Dillon, birthday 07/24/1986.  The profile photo showed a photo of her old English teacher, a little older than when Sasha had last seen her, but definitely the same person.

Now the question was, what was she going to do about it?  She wanted to reach out, wanted to have family again, but it might be better to leave it alone.  At least she knew there was someone out there.  What she didn’t know was if Mel had any idea that she was adopted.  Sasha wasn’t sure if she should tell her about it.

She decided that it was best to keep it all to herself for a while.

 

It had been six weeks since Sasha’s last trip to the lake house.  She had finished the work on the house.  The realtor that she’d hired had listed it and quickly found a buyer. 

Sasha was on her way home from signing the paperwork when she drove through her hometown and passed her favorite coffee shop there.  She decided to stop in and warm herself up with a nice hot latte.  It would feel good to get out of the car and stretch.

The interior had been updated since Sasha had last been there but it still had the same cozy feel to it.  She felt right at home.  It had been a good idea to stop.

Someone bumped into her from behind as she waited in line to order.

“I’m so sorry!” came a voice from behind her.

Sasha turned around to tell the woman that it was no problem.  Her heart started racing.  It was her sister.

“Oh Mel… Mrs. Dillon!” she stammered.

“Sasha Collings? It’s so nice to see you! And please, call me Mel.  We’re not teacher and student anymore.”

Sasha’s thoughts were racing, but she forced her voice to be calm when she answered.

“It’s good to see you too, um, Mel.  Would you like to join me for a coffee? I’d love to catch up.”