It was as if she was an early spring storm. Here and gone in a flash, stuck in your head for only a few days before fading, remembered only when she came once more.  She never stayed in one place for long, never made any deep connections with anybody, never told anyone her name, and you never knew when she would appear. She was always she, nothing more, nothing less, an eternal entity. The rumor was that she didn’t have a name, but I never believed that, she was well educated and extremely smart; she liked to use fancy words like ‘chatoyant’ and ‘ethereal’. I asked her what they meant one time, but she just smiled a blinding smile, a smile that enveloped you and made you feel safe, and walked away. That was the last time I saw her. I used to believe that I had angered her and that’s why she never came back. I was just a child then, she wasn’t much older, maybe sixteen or seventeen.

Three years later I saw her again. She looked sick. I realize now that she had always looked like that, but she had also always looked happy, she didn’t anymore. I had wanted to ask her where she had gone, but I was afraid that she wouldn’t come back again. Even at fifteen that was my biggest fear, that this myth of a woman wouldn’t be real. Her hair was much shorter than the light brown waves I had known her to have, her chocolate brown eyes were more sunken into her skull, and her caramel colored skin had grown pale. She did not look so eternal now, she looked mortal, young. At that moment I decided that I would find out who this woman was.

It was years later when I would find out her name. Alexandria Bennett, born May 18, 1995, no known address. She had been a ghost for years, a myth sewn into my reality. She still didn’t truly exist, she had a name and a birthday, but she wasn’t tangible, wasn’t real, I didn’t think she ever would be. I was right when I was younger; she was scary smart, like there was a library in her head, she had two degrees, one in Chemistry and one in Botany. I would later learn that when she traveled around she was studying for her Botany degree, and that she was writing a book on different plant types indigenous to the American continents.

The next time I saw her I called her name. I was no longer afraid of her disappearing, now that I knew she was real. She seemed surprised, and why wouldn’t she, she never told anyone her name and she never stayed in one place very long. We went to a café for lunch and she explained that it was safer if she kept moving around and that no one knew her name. I was stunned for a moment before I looked up to ask a question only to find that she was gone. Once again, I wondered if she wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.

It was years before I saw her again, well I didn’t really see her, more like felt her presence. By this time, I was married and had a child on the way. The night after my baby shower the doorbell rang and my husband went to answer it, when he came back he was caring one stalk of a beautiful yellow flower planted in what appeared to be an antique flower pot. I never found out where the pot came from, but it sits on the windowsill of the window in my kitchen even now. The flower on the other hand I came to know as the wildflower known as the bear-paw poppy, an endangered species found in an isolated corner of the Mojave Desert. I knew in that instance, who had sent me the flower.

The next year I was left her journal, an unedited version of her book, her life’s work. I was the only person who ever received a copy, the book was never published. One more mystery I had never solved is how she found me, I had moved twice since the time we had that short conversation in that Georgetown café.

I didn’t see her again until my third child had graduated high school. She looked much older now, much more fragile, but she still held that ethereal beauty that she held when I was twelve. She was sitting in the park feeding the birds, like you see little old ladies do in movies. She made eye contact with me and sent that blinding smile of hers my way. I just stood there a moment looking, my dog standing looking confused as to why I had stopped our daily run. I was broken out of my stupor by a teen running up to Alex. She looked so much like the teen from my childhood, carefree, young, and oh-so blinding. The teen turned around and I was thrown back to when I was twelve and Alex was the woman without the name and a myth on the playground.  I realized as I watched the teen help Alex stand and walk away that that was the last time I would ever see her. She smiled at me and I knew all would be alright.

I sit here now, a widow, a mother, a grandmother, and soon to be great-grandmother, knowing that I lived a fulfilling life, with only one regret. Alex is still only a fairytale told to children at night, the early spring storm, the woman that never was and still is.