92

A taunting laughter fills the listless street, breaking the uneasy silence of the Parisians going about their way. The German guard and their patrols, just as the sun would rise, they were a constant presence. In another life this city would be renowned for culture, its trend-setting fashion and penchant for love. However far off that day may be, it was a reality that had not yet arrived but for one. A slight woman sat quietly outside the café, taking no notice of the scene unfolding in front of her. All this had happened before in some distant imagination, and it would happen again today.

The boisterous soldier found great pleasure in striking the waitress. She picked herself off the ground and gathered the spilled, cold tea the soldier so violently disapproved of. The slight woman with her short cropped black hair stared in disgust as the scene played itself out. On another day she would have fought for the barista, she would be the avenger they had come to know her for. But for today was the day she would leave this world alive, and onto the great purpose that had come to be her final years with us. The soldiers would take notice of her, as she knew they would. With an unassuming smile to herself and no one in particular, she brought her hands together in a thunderous clap shaking the very foundation of Paris. Explosions timed perfectly to her declaration of arrival, and the soldiers scattered towards the hail of fire. As the blinding white light washed over her, she thought to herself of the chaos she had left behind, and wondered to what great adventure waited for her at the next destination.

For the past ninety-two years, the sun has risen every day to kiss good morning to the little girl from foothills of western Tennessee. The daughter of a blacksmith back when having a blacksmith was essential to the survival of any small, Midwestern town. Theo McElvaney was the first of her family to attend business college. While other women would attend for the expressed purpose of finding their husbands, she set out to be the greatest her family had ever seen. The business woman, during an era where women were the window dressing to an office, she was a generation ahead of her time. The head of the draft board, having the unimaginable task of deciding which of her friend’s children, that she had known since they were born, were to be sent to fight in the jungle. The wife of the chief of police, the danger that came with his job and the burden of never knowing where his duty would take him. But these were not the stories she would tell us, for life was what it was, and accomplishments were nothing more than doing what was expected of you.

There is an image of the frail, elderly version of Theo McElvany, sitting in her wheelchair, parked in the hallway of the nursing home where she would come to spend the last years of her life. As the sun rose and set again across our many adventures, her routine never changed. The months turned to years and you forget what life must have been like outside that same hallway, the same dying neighbors. But time no longer had meaning for her, and solace can be found in her escape. Throughout those final years she would live hundreds of lives, traveling back and forth through the dream state that so clouded her mind, into the most fantastical imagination of days of long past. She was a part of the French résistance. She was dancing the night away at The Sands in the desert. She was the mother of children that she was could have been proud of. These escapades were as real to her as you are to me. She was no prisoner to her mind, she had found a way out of it all, to live the life she never knew, the secret adventures of a small town girl.

In our last moment together, I placed my hand inside of hers and she squeezed lightly enough to let me know. My memories with her, those summer vacations spent in Bloomington, are the only thoughts of a childhood worth holding on to. On her blessing way, I can only hope the woman I marry grows up to be the grandmother that I said goodbye to today. With a lasting kiss on her warm cheek, I walked out into the hallway where she had spent so many years drifting through time and space. On the wall across from her door sat a beautiful acrylic print. With the Arc de Triumph in the background, the scene depicted an early evening on a Paris street around the turn of the century. The streets were lined with Parisians full of life and imagination. Light from the storefronts reflected from the ground, as if a rain shower had just passed through.

For the first time in ninety-two years, the sun rose alone, its little girl was nowhere to be found. Straighten up the house Bernie, your gal is coming home.