Author's Note: Uhm…I blame sleep deprivation. Anyone else stay up all night reading the seventh Harry Potter book? I slept from noon today to about four P.M., which is probably the biggest reason why you're reading this. I wholeheartedly apologize.
Disclaimer: I wish. Where's that djinn?
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
Bu only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost
"Nothing Gold Can Stay"
Eden, Sinking
Ellen forgets the first time she held her daughter.
She realizes this almost as a matter of fact, just another casualty of love and age and passing time. She thinks how ironic it is that she knows exactly when it is that she forgets what it feels like to hold this tiny human being in her arms. And Ellen's daughter is not even an hour old and still pink from the womb, and she has been given a woman's name and a place in the world and Bill's hand on her tiny forehead, but Jo was hers first.
And Ellen touches the baby-soft cheek and thinks, Mine.
And Ellen thinks how Jo melted against her when John Winchester handed her Bill's wedding ring with guilt and sorrow in his eyes, how Ellen could only stare and hold her daughter and her husband's ring and she thinks about how dark and still it was in the street the first time Bill kissed her, how he smiled when he touched her swollen belly, how he gave Jo her name. How he could fit half of Jo's newborn body in one hand, the way he smiled whenever Jo said, Daddy, how he would sweep Jo up after a hunt and their hair would flow together, like two halves of the sun.
And Bill had been hers once too, but now all she can think is, Gone.
She thinks how Jo came to her, the first Father's Day afterwards, with a construction paper card addressed to Heaven, with the words, Dear Daddy, I miss you. Love, Jo, in blue crayon.
How Jo had wanted to send it off in the mail, how she had cried when she learned she couldn't, that death didn't work that way. How her hair had shone like gold in the sun when she placed the card on her father's empty grave.
Ellen had kept the card, and each one for years afterward, six of them, in a box with Bill's wedding ring, and sometimes at night she spread them out on her bed and held their rings in her hand, winking in the moonlight, and just sat looking at the symbols of their love and at the beauty that came out of it, and with grief in her throat could only think, Why?
Ellen remembers how, when Jo was ten, she had stopped making the cards, and had begun asking about her father, what he was like, how they met, what music he listened to, how he took his coffee, the way he laughed. And she had stroked her daughter's hair and held Jo in her arms, even though she was really too big, and thought, I can give her this.
And every night for months, Ellen would climb into her daughter's bed and offer up tidbits, pieces of Bill that both of them clung to like lifelines, anchoring them to happier times. And slowly Jo came to know her father as Ellen had, learned how he had loved to bury his nose in Ellen's hair as she passed by him, just to smell her, just to be near her. How he made her fall in love with him all over again, every time he smiled. How his hands shook when they put the ring on her finger.
And Jo learned not just of her father and mother, but of her father and herself. How he had announced to the entire room that Ellen was going to have a baby, and swung her around in circles until they were both dizzy with joy.
How he had picked out names, and if she'd been a boy she would have been Nathan William Harvelle, but she wasn't and so he said, Joanna, and her mother had picked Beth because Jo reminded her of Little Women, of Jo March who was strong and fierce and Beth who was sweet and gentle, and Ellen wanted Jo to be a little of both.
How he had driven to the hospital with one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on the curve of Ellen's pregnancy, talking to the baby the whole time. You wait until you see your mama, baby, she's beautiful. You'll love her, just like I love her. And I love you, baby, we both do, and we're so happy you're gonna be here soon. We love you, baby. How he had nearly fainted at the sight of the birth blood, this brave strong man, who had faced demons and ghosts and nightmares.
How he had spent hours in the days afterward just watching her sleep, this tiny baby who was a part of him. How he had strung up balloons all around the Roadhouse, so that for weeks seasoned hunters sat juxtaposed against the pink Mylar It's A Girl!, and how, at the bar, Bill insisted on showing them Polaroids of Jo yawning, sleeping, crying, sneezing, even having her diaper changed, until Ellen hid the snapshots in favor of the real thing. How hunters would tease that Bill had gone soft, until they saw tiny baby Jo and realized that he'd only met his daughter.
How Bill couldn't refuse her anything when she made that scrunched-up please? face of hers, the one that melted everyone's hearts who saw it. How he had tickled her just to hear her laugh.
And amidst these treasures, memories of who Bill had been, Ellen saw Jo becoming her father's daughter, the girl she would have been if he had been there to raise her, and she smiled to herself because even in death, Bill was still Jo's father, and Ellen saw him in the curve of her daughter's nose, in her fine golden hair, in the set of her jaw when she decided on something.
And even now, she sees her husband in her daughter and thinks, You.
Ellen knows how things must change, how all children grow up and leave their parents and make their own lives. She thinks how she held Bill's hand on the steps of the Roadhouse, looking in at the life they would make for themselves. She remembers that she could feel her wedding ring between their fingers, sure proof that they were people now, out in the world, and how she stepped over the threshold with him into the front room, how they both felt the thrill of moving forward in their lives together, and Ellen looked around the musty bar and thought, Us.
Ellen feels more than sees her daughter growing older, coming into her own just as Ellen did in the same room, years ago. She senses the way Jo's desires turn her away from her mother and towards the world, how Jo is reaching the age when she must find her own way, make her own life. But Ellen still watches her daughter with a mother's eye, clings to the fraying apron strings and thinks, Wait.
And she watches Jo every day for signs she knows will come, are already there, but Jo's loyalty to her mother keeps her from leaving, and Ellen makes no move to dislodge her. And because of this Ellen knows she is selfish.
And the day comes when she looks at Jo, almost by accident, just a glance like so many others every day, and sees that her daughter is no longer hers, that something is gone that Ellen never knew was there. Her heart jumps at this, and Ellen looks around for the source of this sudden and profound bereavement, and as her eyes search for the reason Jo is no longer hers, she forgets the first time she held her daughter. And Ellen realizes that Jo is twenty-three, as old as Ellen was when Jo was born.
Ellen sees Dean Winchester smiling at her daughter, sees how Jo blossoms like a flower in the light of his gaze on her, and she is ready to let her daughter go.
And Ellen suddenly remembers what it felt like to touch her daughter's newborn skin, and looks upon her now, a grown woman, ready, and Ellen thinks, Jo.