“tHE BETTA FISH PATCH”

“Oh, and one more thing,” said Eleanor's older sister Grace, who was about to walk through the back sliding door. “If she asks for orange juice, she really means apple juice. She doesn't know the difference yet.”

Grace continued on, as Eleanor's eyes followed the back of her sister's darkly browned hair through the sheer mesh. The hair she always wished she had. It was braided in two. 

Grace had left the two Eleanors to not only tend to a backyard painting lesson she had previously arranged with a young woman she had met in a flower shop just two weeks prior, but to allow the two girls to meet one another properly. Eleanor's gaze wandered away from the door and over to the toddler who sat a few yards in front of her. A two-and-a-half-year-old girl with the name Eleanor as well. But she only knew herself as Elly. This was the first time Eleanor had met her niece Elly. 

Eleanor had traveled by bus from Minnesota to Colorado and arrived at her sister Grace’s condo just about a half-hour ago. Having skipped her college graduation just a week prior, Eleanor, by payphone, had asked her sister Grace if she could stay with her for about a month or so. No questions asked. Grace, having not seen her sister in three years and only having spoken to her by phone on occasion, happily agreed. Eleanor is one to do just that. Speak on occasion. Eleanor was always one to do this, as she is one to be innately seldom. Her parents had split when she was ten and her mother passed away when she was seventeen. Her father, now married with a stepchild of his own, cares for Eleanor and Grace from afar. If you could call it that. As one of the last times Eleanor had spoken to her father, he had some time during the call uttered the words, "An English major with no dream." Or no dream yet. 

About two years ago, Eleanor had caught a stroke of an unknown melancholic sentiment that suddenly, yet gradually riveted upon her. She doesn’t know how, why, or when. She endured and still endures this. Alone. Caught in a tug of solus, she believes that what the world had once asked of her and vice versa, is an idea that has drifted to a cataract level of haziness. Yet all of these chords of thought had been subtly ameliorated, sitting across from this unknown little girl, whom she shared a name with. 

When Grace first told Eleanor the name of her newly born child, it was by a letter, in which Eleanor found wrinkled within the crease of her dorm room door. The words entailing, that she decided on the name of her first-born child the exact moment she saw her. Eleanor. After their Mother, who also had the name. Three generations. Three Eleanors. It wasn't until she read that letter, that Eleanor herself had recognized the sheer weight the name had carried all along. Especially within the rarity it somehow held, being named the same as the ones who became before you. One can be oneself, but a torch of sorts would always be passed down. This feeling had risen to a new height when the name and face of her niece had first aligned in Eleanor's vision, just about a half-hour prior. As that very feeling had carried over to this moment in time. Directly before her, occupied to her own world, Elly played with a small pink fire truck on a rug instilled with a neighborhood full of wool streets and houses. A rug that hit Eleanor with a strong sense of nostalgia. 

Eleanor examined the little girl, looking upon her freely occupied innocence that displayed no effort at all. Wondering if we as adults ever go, or even dip back to that sense of naiveness a child holds. Do we hold, or let go? Elly, speaking gibberish to herself, drove her truck down the carpeted road, eventually leading to the tip of Eleanor's beaten shoe, causing Elly to peek up at her. Eyes before head. A simple blankness read across the child's face as she inspected Eleanor. Gradually, her large hazel-colored eyes made their way down, to be suddenly distracted by the medium-sized patch that Eleanor had sewn on the right side of her weathered navy crewneck. 

“Bird,” Elly said out loud, pointing to it. 

Eleanor looked down at the circular, baby blue patch hanging on by only seven of the ten threads it originally beheld. The patch did not have a bird on it, but a dark maroon-colored betta fish with three small bubbles above its mouth that gradually got smaller. 

“Oh, no…” Eleanor stuttered, “This is a fish.” 

Elly stared at her, vacant of reaction, glancing back at the patch curiously. 

"Fish," Eleanor repeated as she pointed to the patch. 

Eleanor then moved her arms down to make a swimming motion with her hands, as if the active movement would somehow get the message across more easily.

Elly watched curiously. She then suddenly placed her two arms upon the ground to propel herself to stand, eyes glued to the patch. Eleanor's knee brought Elly's wobbly walk to a halt, as she immediately touched the patch, finding her way to play with the loose threads. 

“Bird,” Elly said again, with an artless smile.

Eleanor looked down at the girl, feeling at a tie with some type of urge to correct her. But that feeling gradually slipped by, as she began to see the pure bliss on the child's face. Grazing her small fingers across the fish made of thread. Eleanor attempted to think back at a time in which her fingers were that minute. A time that felt hazy. Dreamlike. Distant.

"Bird," Elly repeated with that same smile. Causing Eleanor to slowly match a smile of her own.  

She felt something. A thought. One she couldn't quite put her nose on. Tandemly feeling a sense. A sense that this child before her seemed to be not worried about anything. Labels. Rules. Worries the world had to offer. She instead seemed to be innately curious about the world itself. At this moment in time. Right in front of her. It felt simple, but only for an instance. 

“Bird,” Eleanor said aloud, agreeing with the girl.

She knew that she would learn the difference one day. But that didn’t have to be today.