Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A True (As Told to Me) Story

by Bess Kalb

Bessie, if you try on a dress and you don’t immediately want to parade outside the dressing room and show it off to everyone in the store, take it off and forget it ever existed.

When they opened the gate, I ran onto the tarmac and pulled you into my arms and into my chest and your chin bobbed down on my shoulder, and I squeezed you until I felt your vertebrae pop. I held you so hard you could barely draw breath. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Then we held hands as we walked to the car and we didn’t say a thing.

And you know what he said—I’ll say it again, I don’t care if you’ve heard it a thousand times. I don’t care if you can say it backward in French standing on your head. He told me, “Bobby, when the world is cracking behind your feet, you keep walking forward.”

She’ll prefer your mother to you by the time she’s ten. Daughters can’t wait to get away from their mothers. They can’t wait to fall into their grandmother’s arms. Don’t say I never told you so.