Teddy and I went to visit the elders Eleora and Tellias yesterday. My husband Teddy and I will be alone this Christmas. I don’t mean alone like living in a crypt. Our children won’t be here. They have their reasons. They’ve explained. They’re adults now. Of course I will miss them. I always miss them. I always worry about them. They are my heart and soul but, I raised them to fly my nest.
I know, weird that I’ve spent twelve years blogging about raising your children to be independent and fly, and now… I am proud beyond words, but…anyway.
We drove down the old River Road, the back of the truck packed with supplies we knew our old people would forget to obtain for themselves. I also brought a big pot with four double pink amaryllis bulbs in it. Each bulb was a bit different than the next and they were all starting to bloom. We didn’t say much about the kids. Instead we talked about other things. Just stuff.
We arrived at the Queen Ann Victorian House on the river, surrounded by orchards and once amazing formal gardens. Eleora and Tellias built the house and the farm back in the 1870’s. Over the years they upgraded the house, and then they stopped.
They are ancient but they look like they’re eighteen or nineteen years old. They act like really old people, because they are really old. They’re ancient.
Tellias stood on the front porch wearing black tuxedo pants and a red sweater with a red and green bowtie. On his feet he wore one red sock and one green sock. No shoes. I kissed his check and gave him a hug then brushed my hand on his hair.
“This is the first time I’ve seen your hair short since the 1950’s,” I said. “It looks good.”
“Tellias went with me when I was getting my hair cut and decided he needed a change,” said my brother Val.
I gave Val, who was in jeans and a fisherman style wool sweater, a hug.
Tellias brushed his own hand through his white blonde hair, now short on the back and sides and longer on the top, now brushing over his left eye. He smiled and kissed my cheek. “Come see Eleora. She’ll be so happy to see you.”
Tellias ushered us in. He took the pot full of huge pink amaryllis bulbs I was carrying. My brother Val took the case of Poet’s Blood my husband Teddy was carrying.
Standing in the middle of the front room was Eleora. She wore her usual unusual mix of old and new. Today she wore a red shift with black tights, black riding boots, and a purple beaded sweater. She’d tied up her brown hair with a green and pink ribbons. She also had on black lace fingerless gloves.
Eleora doesn’t always remember who people are, or what she is trying to say. The file drawers in her brain have rusted shut, and when she gets them open often the contents spill out in a jumbled mess, or she finds herself looking into an empty drawer.
I made a joke the other day about just putting a can of WD40 next to my ear and spraying it in to get my memory unlocked sometimes. But that is neither here nor there right now.
“Juliette!” She said my name as she took my hands, then embraced me. She looks all of eighteen years old but she is as old as Methuselah, or older than dirt depending on who you talk to. I’m not kidding. She is well over 2,000, both she and Tellias are, but nobody is quite sure how old she is.
I am one of the people I don’t think she will ever forget. She’ll look at others with a puzzled frustration on her face, but she always knows me.
Sometimes when I visit her, I retell her podcasts about history and nature and science that I’ve heard that week. She won’t listen to anything that has been recorded but she will listen to me, and the sound of my voice.
“Are the children going to be here?” Eleora asked.
“Not this time,” I said. “I’ll have them facetime you. You know, call you with a picture on the phone.”
She smiled but I’m not sure she knew what I was talking about. I told her I’d bring them by next time they were in town.
Most people read Vampire books all about old evil Vampire lords who have no love in their hearts and no souls. They think we’re immortal. In reality, just like regular people, none of us know how long we have.
Val turned on some Christmas music.
Teddy took Eleora by the hand. “Dance with me my dear. I know you love to dance.”
He held her close as they moved around the floor.
“I remember when you were alive,” she said to him. “It was 1859 and you were just ten years old. You were such a sweet warm boy. Now you’re just hot but in a different way, and nice and cold at the same time. It almost broke my heart when they almost lost you. Tellias performed a miracle coaxing your soul back into your body. He saved you from being a soulless husk of a shadow creeper. It was odd how your parents and Juliette’s parents were best friends, but they had no idea we were all Vampires. Did you know Teddy, that Tellias was at that place when that baby was born, you know when that angel Gabe showed up, and those rich guys. There was some sort of cosmic event they were all following like a comet or something. Tellias was a Roman back then, but he wasn’t born a Roman. They thought he was a demigod. Can you imagine? Teddy, after the holidays I want you to take me to that animal control place and I want to adopt a black cat. I’d take another cat too. Maybe two cats.”
“We can do that,” said Teddy.
Then she started to quietly sing the song The Voice.
“Remember when we all went to see the Moody Blues? Oh goodness Justin Hayward was almost as handsome as you are.”
“That was a fun night,” said Teddy.
“Yes, dear Theodore, I remember when you were warm and alive, and when you were older, about twenty, and I danced with you on Christmas Eve, and I could feel your heart beat. Merry Christmas Teddy.” Then she laughed and put her head on his shoulder.
“Merry Christmas Eleora,” said my husband as he kissed her with perfectly cold lips on the top of her hair, all tied in the green and pink bows.
~ Juliette aka Vampire Maman
Vampire Maman 