SNAPSHOTS
Written by Jessica
Based on some situations originated by James Cameron.

When I was twenty-two, I danced with a soldier.

It was in one of those barren army camps, filled with fresh-faced boys who didn't know the first thing about war, or about death; who were terrified at going and exhilarated at the idea of coming back heroes. I was there because I was young, myself, young and beautiful and feeling generous enough of heart to give these children something to look forward to when they came home.

I flashed smiles and wore dresses low-cut enough to attract them like moths to a flame, but there was only one that I danced with. I never even knew his name. He was leaving the next day, he said. Off to the great unknown. He was young and handsome and terrified of boats. I told him I sympathized and we waltzed to a long forgotten tune, while he tried not to think about tomorrow and I tried not to think about yesterday.

I kissed him good-bye, and prayed for us both.

*****

When I was twenty-five, I sang on Broadway.

The theater was dreadfully hot and stuffy, the piano out of tune. When I dared to lift my eyes, I saw that my audience was nothing more than fifteen or so people scattered about the room; probably they'd ducked inside to escape the August heat wave.

I took a deep breath and sang for all I was worth.

They gave me a nice round of applause, those people. A few even stood. I gave them an encore. They stayed. I kept going. And still they remained. I sang until my voice gave out, until I was literally croaking, and then I quit. I took a bow and picked up every single flower that was thrown onto the stage and kept them. They applauded me all the way out of the theater.

I never sang on Broadway again, but I will always remember that day. I have eleven roses pressed into a scrapbook to remind me that on a humid day in 1920, I gave fifteen people the show of my life.

*****

When I was twenty-nine, I had a garden.

I knew it was sort of an innocuous thing to wish for, but I'd always wanted one. I was living in California in those days, in a small cottage by the sea in Los Angeles. The first thing I did after I bought the house was to tackle the jungle of a backyard. I pulled up weeds until my back ached and the dirt was permanently caked beneath my fingernails. I turned the soil until my hands were raw from holding the shovel. I planted flowers and bushes and watered them faithfully, religiously, every day. I put my soul into that garden, and for one spring it thrived like Eden.

That summer there was a drought, and it turned brown and withered away.

I wept and raged and vowed never to plant another seed in my life, and I remained true to that covenant. It took me a long time to stop feeling bitter that all my hard work had been for naught, but eventually I came to look back on that year with a kind of indulgent amusement. After all, I was alive. And I'd had my garden. In those days, that was enough.

*****

When I was thirty-six, I went to Africa.

For three months I went on safaris and lived in dungarees and heavy boots. I rode an elephant and concocted a story about having been chased by a lion. Nobody ever believed me. I drank in the customs of those people with a thirst that seemed unquenchable. I learned their language, and eventually forgot it. I danced in their ceremonies and choked down their food. I always told myself I'd go back someday, but I never did. Oh, I went to many other places, but never again did I immerse myself in another culture so completely. Never again did I feel quite so young, or quite so alive, as I did then. I sold two of my photographs to National Geographic and people said to me, you're such a good photographer, but the truth is I'm not any sort of photographer. I just tried to capture all of what I was feeling, every living, breathing second of that trip, in black and white stills.

They will never do it justice.

*****

When I was thirty-nine, I gave birth to a baby girl, whom I named Madeleine.

I took one look at her, wrapped in her soft white blanket, lashes fluttering against her soft cheeks, and I fell instantly in love. She was my whole world. Everything, all my hopes and dreams and deepest wishes--in that moment, they all rested on her, and I wanted her to have everything. I was determined to make her life mean something, not to me, but to her. It was perhaps something of a slap in the face when she became her daddy's girl not three years later, and remained so until her teens, but I always loved her as much--if not more--for the rest of my life as I did in that first moment of seeing her beautiful face.

She will forever remain my greatest gift and my truest salvation.

*****

When I was forty-five, I swam in the ocean for the first time.

We visited the Pacific shore near San Diego. Madeleine, who had never seen the ocean, was positively giddy. She and her father splashed right into the surf, while I planted myself firmly on the sand. I had a deeply rooted aversion to large bodies of water, and they knew this. They also managed to drag me into the water by the end of the day. To my great relief I found it warm, like bathwater, and clear turquoise. I insisted on being able to see the bottom at all times. I know they always found that strange about me, that I could fly airplanes and ride horses and go on safaris, yet I could not stand to be near water. There was much I never told them, and I never regretted that. They were my life, but I had my secrets, and part of what made me who I was, was that sometimes the secrets were tremendously more important.

We got a swimming pool soon after, but I rarely swam in the ocean again.

*****

When I was fifty-three, I decided to write a novel.

The great American novel, I thought. I'd certainly had an interesting life so far. Why not write it down? It took me over a month to learn how to type, and I was so bad at it that finally I had Madeleine type while I narrated. We got up to chapter seven before I quit out of frustration. It was much harder than I thought to write a best-selling autobiography, although my daughter seemed to find the story of my life fascinating. I spent the next week telling her the rest and in doing so realized that the look of wonder on her childish face was worth more than a thousand good reviews in the New York Times. I came back to that unfinished manuscript, years later, and found it to be sorely lacking--in truth. Oh, it was true all right, but I'd left out a few juicy parts. The parts that had defined my life and made me who I was.

I put it away and never looked at it again.

*****

When I was sixty-four, I cried at my daughter's wedding.

Madeleine Dawson Calvert was becoming Madeleine Dawson West right in front of my eyes. I'd promised myself--and her--that I would not cry, but I couldn't help it. The revelation that she was all grown up had already hit me several years ago, but it was still so hard to believe. Her husband--my son-in-law--was a doctor and a very good man, but in that moment I hated that he was taking her away from me. I knew that our bond would not break, but it would stretch, and I needed her in my life. I tried to tell myself that this was what every grieving mother went through on her child's wedding day, but somehow it was different when it was your child. Somehow you think that nobody could possibly have hurt as much, or been as proud, as you were in that moment. Somehow it just hits you that nothing will ever be the same again, and in the moment that it hit me there was nothing that I wanted more than for time to just stop. Please, stop time, so that I can take stock of all that is passing before my eyes.

Time marches relentlessly onward.

*****

When I was seventy-two, I went to Japan.

My family would say that I ran away...that's stretching the truth a bit. In actuality, I told them where I was going, but nobody believed I'd actually do it. So, of course I went, just to prove them wrong. I went and had quite a lovely time all by myself, and by the time I came back was feeling much younger and a bit proud of myself. My daughter was appalled. She told me I was in my seventies and couldn't just go trotting around the globe whenever I felt like it. I told her I was in my seventies and would do whatever I damn well pleased. I got no more arguments after that, but every time they came over for dinner I think she searched my purse for airline tickets.

*****

When I was eighty-five, I took piano lessons.

Of course, my arthritis was already acting up, but I needed something new to keep me busy, and piano seemed like the way to go. I was very good at it, and if I could ignore the pain in my joints, I'd play for hours and hours. I'd taken lessons once before, as a young girl, and recalled vaguely that I'd hated them. Now, not quite as prone to outdoor flights of fancy, I loved to play. In fact, I played at my grandson's wedding several years later, which was one of the more triumphant moments in my life. I had to stop playing when the pain got to be unbearable, which was a great loss to me in the later part of my life. It always made me wish I'd stuck by those lessons when I was just a girl. But then, there are a lot of things one wishes one had done differently in their youth.

*****

When I was ninety-two, I accompanied my daughter and her family to Las Vegas.

I also won eight thousand dollars at the slot machines. The next night I lost almost half of it playing poker. I gave the rest to my daughter and told her to dole it out as she wished; I had no use for extravagancy at my age. However, slots aside, Vegas was fun. It reminded me of Atlantic City, where I'd lived for a spell when I was in my twenties. We got dressed up and went to the Cirque du Soleil one night, and spent another day at the Hoover Dam. All in all, it was one of the best trips I'd ever taken, and it was one of the last times we were all together as a family. My daughter's husband passed away a year later. She wept in my arms and I told her that I understood. She thought I was talking about her father. I never bothered to correct her.

*****

When I was one hundred, I visited my mother's grave.

She was buried in a cemetery in Philadelphia, among the other Bukaters and beside my father. Her headstone read simply In Loving Memory, Ruth Ann Bukater, 1872-1945. I knelt down as best I could beside her headstone and placed the bouquet of flowers against it, and I cried. I cried for a very long time that sunny afternoon. I wondered what kind of mother she was, to have neglected me so many years ago, and I wondered what kind of daughter I was, to sever all ties. It was all so long ago, God, so long ago, that night when I'd last seen her. I had told her good-bye and I'd meant it, but that didn't mean I wasn't regretting my decision now. That didn't mean it didn't tear me apart that I was at my mother's grave, my mother, the woman who had given birth to me and sang me lullabies and told me once that I was beautiful. I had loved her, once. Maybe a part of me always had, out of some tie or bond of loyalty in simply the knowledge that she was indeed my mother.

I introduced her to her granddaughter, and we drove away from that cemetery forever.

*****

I did not live to see one hundred and one.

Nobody ever really wants to die. Not even when they are old. It is a misconception that old people have been all lived out. I would have gladly lived forever if I'd been able. But on the night that my soul was set free, no longer held down by a world-weary body, I had no regrets. Not a one. My life had been far from perfect, of course. I had had my share of suffering and pain, all the way across the spectrum from trivial to cataclysmic. But as someone once told me, life's a gift. And that remained my adage until the very last.

In returning to what was almost my watery grave, I achieved closure on a part of my life that I'd thought would haunt me forever. I was free. I had won. And I slept that night secure in the knowledge that my life had been a good one. That in the end, I'd made it all count for something after all.

*****

When I was seventeen, I trusted a stranger and took his hand. I laughed with him and cried with him, danced with him and made love to him, lived a lifetime in his eyes. And I promised him that I'd never let go.

I never did.

The End.

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