Lovers & Old Cemeteries

By Sandra Walker

Love can be like cotton candy. It melts in your mouth, but the memories last forever...

 

Written as a collection of memoirs, short stories, and memories of past loves, these tales are an honest reflection of the wonderful—and not so wonderful—things that can happen when a woman finds the courage to risk her heart.

 

Spanning the 1960s in New York to the present day in Florida, these stories of new love and lost love, despair and devotion, infatuation and passion never lose sight of what's most important: that love is essential to a fulfilling life, and that, as life goes on, it's never too late to find love if you keep hope in your heart and stay open to all the wonderous possibilities life offers.

 

The best advice offered by this book is to live in defiance of the failures and find the courage to search and seize any small victory of love. That, to be hopeful in difficult times, is not foolishly romantic.

 

And to treasure the cotton candy moments of life.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: ScribeTribe
• Release date: Aug 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201714338

Book preview

Lovers and Old Cemeteries, Copyright © 2022 by Sandra Walker

All rights reserved.

Cover Design and Interior Layout by www.formatting4U.com

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and her crazy friends. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It cannot be re-sold, reproduced, scanned or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Table of Contents

Preface

Hey Girl

Lovers and Old Cemeteries

Six and a Half Weeks

Abbie’s Summer in the Hamptons 1967

Part Two - Sam: The First Date

Part Three - The Proposal

The Reunion in Delray Beach (2010)

Brian—What I Left Behind

Part Two: The Leaving

Part Three: Getting to Portland

Preface

If I had let her, my mother could have taken away the pleasure of almost any happy situation. Whenever I told her about something that troubled me at school or with my friends, she would say, You don’t know how to talk to people. That’s your problem.

Then she would give me the words I should have said, provocative, annoying words that a child didn’t need to hear, and take me to a place that made me feel small and stupid. I guess that’s why I started to write because my mother told me I was not good at talking.

I became a professional writer and published a book about my divorce, The Seventh Month, Moonshine Cove Publishing, LLC in 2020, during the height of the pandemic. Since that agonizing time, my partner of 30 years passed away from complicated medical conditions, other than Covid. Barry was my rock and faithful love and I miss him beyond words. My memories of him and the times we had together encouraged me to write another book. My daughter also encouraged me to organize and publish my collection of short stories about love, which I have written and saved over the last 25 years.

When I think about young love, mostly it is about infatuation. When we are teenagers, romance is around every corner, and feelings of love, or like, easily spring from our hearts at the slightest touch, the most innocent kiss, or even a glance from across the room. I remember falling in like with a young man while working at Marshall Field & Company at Christmas time when I was in college.

I was assigned to sell cotton candy machines in the busy toy department. The exclusive store in downtown Chicago was known for its gorgeous holiday tree elaborately decorated with stunning red, gold, and silver ornaments, which you could practically touch going up the escalator.

Working there during the festive holiday season was an exciting, albeit exhausting, experience. It was made more memorable by the wonder of infatuation with the handsome law student I met in the new hires’ training class. I can’t say his name but will call him Douglas. Naturally, as in any love story, he was tall and handsome, with smooth brown hair and warm hazel eyes. Doug’s sales job was in the men’s department, so he always wore a suit, of course, and looked like he belonged in a magazine. He was a college girl’s dream.

What I remembered most though, is the cotton candy. Whenever I demonstrated the cotton candy machine, Douglas would come running over to my counter to get a sample of the pink fluffy cotton candy that I spun into white paper cones. The sticky candy would melt in your mouth. But like infatuation, it didn’t last long. Still, it covered your tongue and the corners of your lips for a few special moments, and it was delicious.

The other stories in this collection took place in New York and some in Florida. In one story, I did find a handsome husband and married in 1966. After having three children together, we divorced in 1977. The experiences in this book cover time leading up to my marriage and after my divorce. Wonderful things happened and some were not so wonderful.

Many of you will say these stories are heartbreaking. As it is with love, connections start with excitement and thrills, infatuation, and passion. If they did end in disappointment and sadness, writing about what happened has been cathartic for me; in every case examining the experience provided solace and insight, understanding what happened and maybe why it happened. It helps