There I was barely seven, stumbling around on the big deck as it cut through the water. I stood by them with the only thing I had a toy plane that often freed me to fantasies I found in my imagination. As we came into the harbor, I remember being awestruck by the Lady Liberty as I looked at her torch and long robe as we ferried into her shadow.
The man next to my mother slipped a gold band on her hand. The captain closed the good book and we would now bear a new name and home.
Here I am thousands of miles away from home. I am shielded with the armor of a hundred tanks surrounded by burned out buildings. Black smoke steals the sunlight. My days as a soldier are closing fast.
There is little left to tell, just a small baby she is in the rubble of what was once her home. Squatting next to the lifeless body of her dead mother, I have knelt down with her and left my tears on the rocks beneath my feet; a thousand miles from home.
Embrace me little Dove for I will see you fly again, and so I carried her back to the Red Cross Station. I told her about a great man that lives in the Shenendoah Valley. A man that talked to God on his knees, a man that taught me to honor the beauty of life, a man that chose to walk with me when my father died.
Embrace me little Dove and I will come back for you and so I left her, with my picture in her hand.
Months later I returned and searched. Day and night, I looked for her. The driver pulled the car over in front of a run down church lost in the foot hills of a million dusty roads I had been down before.
In the translation, I stopped talking. I pulled out a picture of a soldier and showed it to the Sister. She went back into the Church and brought out another picture giving it to me. It was the same picture.
Peering out from behind her were the three year old eyes of a Dove. She wrapped her arms around me and once more, we wept together.
I am here again in the great harbor, as I whisper to her "embrace me little Dove and we can fly forever." For now, it is her turn to be awestruck by the torch and her long robe under the shadow of Lady Liberty.
A page-turning novel about a relationship between best friends that is interrupted because of betrayal , deceit, sexual promiscuity and pregnancy happens!
