Dear Mom her name was Victoria

Dear Mom her name was Victoria

Her name was Victoria. I was in Edmonton Alberta on a shuttle from the airport to downtown on my way to a convention and I was sitting beside a lovely young woman. She had bright blue eyes, blondish hair, a natural sweet smile and skin like porcelain.

Just sitting beside her I got this wonderful butterfly feeling in my stomach. It was not the first time I had ever felt it but it was this moment that would come to define what butterflies meant to me. Realizing I would not get another chance I introduced myself.

“Hi, I’m Mike.”
“I’m Victoria.” She said. She did not smile bigger or act any more interested but when she looked at me she could not have made a bigger impact if she’d kissed me. I was absolutely struck silly. I managed to squeeze out a comprehensive sentence and asked her if she lived there or was just visiting. She said she lived there. I was struggling to keep my cool. Every word pried from my terrified throat and delivered as smooth as I possibly could. I struggled to come up with something else to say after every response and truthfully if I could have got her to just sit there and smile at me it would have been just as good and for easier. The minutes on that bus were like heaven.

I was downtown in a city I did not know. I only knew the hotel I was heading toward and the thought of getting off at a stop that was not mine was terrifying. Yet, I could not figure out how else I was going to make sure I would ever get to see her again. When the shuttle stopped and she got up to leave I also stood up, partially out of chivalric habit and partially as if I was somehow going to convince myself to just get off the bus and follow her till she gave me a phone number. She walked toward the front of the shuttle and a few more people fell in behind her.

I watched out the window as she stopped for a moment to dig in her purse for something. She looked up and seemed to look around as if searching for someone. She then looked at the shuttle and saw me in the window with a look on her face that I swear said: “I thought you were right behind me.” Her hand still clutching what I was sure was her phone number. She raised her other hand and kind of moved her fingers in a goodbye kind of way with this smile on her face that lamented a past opportunity.

The shuttle was moving now and I rushed to the front and demanded the driver stop immediately. He had gone over a block but he did pull over and I leaped out with my suitcase and headed up the street. When I arrived there it was too late. It had not seemed that long but she was nowhere in sight. I wandered down a couple side streets wondering if she lived near there, had an office near there or maybe just a parked car. I scanned the passing vehicles in hopes of a glimpse as she headed home.

After half an hour I made a note of the address and wandered down the street in search of a place that might be able to call a cab. I thought about her all weekend. Why had I not got off the shuttle? Why had I just not said, “If I don’t ask now I fear I may never see you again, what is your phone number?”

I thought about her all weekend. The butterflies in my stomach did not let up for a moment. I was no hungry, thirsty, I did not want to sleep. I vacillated between being sick at my stomach and soaking up the feeling in a sort of euphoria. I changed my flight on the airline to leave the day after the convention. Then on Monday morning I went and spent all day at that address, hoping I would see her on her way to work or on her way home, something. I flew home wondering if the feeling would ever go away.

She was not the first Butterfly Girl and thankfully she would not be the last. But, I had learned my lesson. When opportunity knocks on the door you don’t just answer the door you invite it to dinner. So, from that moment on when I felt the butterflies I made sure to get a name and number or email or something.

To try and to fail is at least to try, but to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been. –Chester Barnard—

Love Mike