Chapter 13

Tina’s turn:

Of course I expected an after-action report on the NASA event. I’m a little jealous, if you must know, because I couldn’t go. Jealousy goes away pretty fast when Kathy comes WALKING towards me, though. I’m a mom of a toddler. Me. Kathy was right on schedule with her mobility milestones, but she’s ahead of the game when it comes to communications skills.

She talks to me, to anybody around, really. We’re used to her in the Community, so we take it as part of our universe, but outsiders are often taken by surprise. Pushing two years old, one is not expected to put words together the way she does. The bigger surprise, though, is when she’s around her contemporaries – Susan’s JW, Jo’s Little Stoney, Donna’s Elise. They hold round-table discussions in some kind of linguistic shorthand.

It’d be easier to understand if their baby physiologies had kept pace with their linguistic development.

But that’s our kids. ‘Our’, because while we’re all mommies in the traditional sense, there’s something unusually close-knit about us and our babies.

But my OTHER baby is twelve and she’s just flown back from Texas where she HIRED a somewhat befuddled engineer she says is The One.

I got Terri’s version, naturally.

“Wonderful time, Tina-mom,” she said. “Cindy’s presentation – well, how do YOU think Cindy would do?”

“You have videos, right?”

“Of course. But that doesn’t convey the reality. Bunch of girls in an auditorium. I think they were getting kind of burnt out. When Cindy was introduced, you know – ‘Here comes another one. Yawn.’ – and then Cindy shows up and she doesn’t look ANYTHING like the other presenters. That made ‘em sit up. And then Cindy talked...”

Terri watched my face. “And she didn’t do technical talk. She talked about choices and goals and profitable behaviors and such. And she brought me ‘n’ Bot-bot out. Said they needed to think of things on the outer edges of possibility and make them happen.”

“I’ll watch the video,” I said. “Now, you and Jerry...”

She smiled. “I knew you’d ask. Yes, me ‘n’ Jerry. My friends let me and Jerry sit at a table by ourselves.” She saw my face. “In direct view, of course, okay?”

“Okay.”

“We talked. We touched fingers.”

“You had dinner with him twice and all you did was touch his fingers...” I stated with a bit of doubt.

“Well, maybe we kissed. Four times. When we met, when we parted. We hugged, too. And held hands.”

“You know your dad’s gonna ask.”

“I won’t tell him any different. Jerry’s IT.”

“You think Jerry’s it. What does Jerry think?”

“He thinks I’m IT. I talked with the others. Analyzed. Seriously, Tina ... Why would he even show up, otherwise? I mean, if we talk about that whole relationship thing. Sex. Jerry and I cannot have sex. It’s the law. WE both know that. So this dude travels an hour and something through traffic leaving Houston to come meet me for dinner and he KNOWS that the most sex he’s gonna get is a kiss and a hug.”

Terri’s on a roll, so I let her go on.

“And you KNOW that Jerry’s a good looking guy, and he’s got a good job, excellent prospect for marriage, so I’m sure that if he WANTED to have a relationship with one or more other women, he could. But instead, he bucks traffic to come see ME.” She sighed. “He SAYS I’m it to him. That kinda shows me that he means it.”

“That and the fact that he’s dragging himself back here to work with you...”

“I’m very happy about that,” she said.

“You need to be very careful, Terri...”

“I know. My heart. His heart. The laws...”

“Senses of propriety need to be maintained, baby,” I said. “People here accept Cindy now, but she looks a little bit older now. When I first met her and Dan, she made him look like a child molester.”

“I can imagine that,” Terri admitted. “And I’d look like that with Jerry, too. But you understand...”

“Heart wants what the heart wants,” I said. “When I decided about your dad ... when we found out that Tennessee law said that if I was under eighteen ... All the other states around us said sixteen. Your dad was willing to give up his job to keep us together.”

“Dad’s got it bad for you, you know...”

“Makes me very happy. But we STILL had to figure out how to NOT be breaking laws. And you’re twelve...”

“Age...” she sighed. “Tina, I won’t. Nothing. Even if I kinda want to when I’m older ... it’s gotta be legal. Losing Jerry would kill me.”

“I know it would, baby,” I said.

Inwardly I tried to imagine Terri if she lost Jerry. I’m sorry – I’m not able to write this thing off as an adolescent infatuation, puppy love, whatever ... I look around me every day and see my sisters and if I am to believe many of them, The One was also the first one to show up in their hearts. Susan was different – I guess you call it ‘normal’. Johanna, maybe a little different. But Cindy, Nikki, Kara, Dana ... right there where Terri is now. Except Terri beat them by a couple of years or more. That’s academically, so why not ascribe similar precociousness to her emotional plane?

“Tina, I’m not about to let my hormones run my life.” She looked at me, her blue eyes as serious as I’ve ever seen them. “Or RUIN my life. Or anybody else’s life, either.”

She slid closer, wrapped her arms around me. for all the wonderful things she is, this is a good one – loving, young daughter trying to navigate the minefields of human emotions. I hugged back.

“I remember the first time I met you in person,” she said. “I thought you ‘n’ Dad looked perfect together. I still do. That’s what I want, Tina. To be like you ‘n’ Dad, and I think that Jerry’s like Dad in a lot of ways. Is that such a bad thing to want?”

“Terri, you’re too smart to think that I don’t want that for you. Everybody wants that for you. Timing, however...”

“Sometimes being a kid sucks...”

“You know better words than that, baby.”

“I do. You know I do. But sometimes a single syllable expletive is more effective in relieving internal stresses.”

I had to kiss the top of her head to keep from snickering out loud.

“You think I’m bad, don’t you?”

“I think you’re so far out of the arena that normal classifications don’t work at all, baby. You just go ahead and be yourself. I’ve learned to trust your judgment.”

She turned her face up to connect her eyes with mine. “I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.” With a little smirk.

“Oh, go ahead, you! We’re supposed to be having us a moment.”

She hugged me tightly. “We did have a moment. You and Dad, and everybody else around here, really – you all keep me having moments.”

“It’s like that, isn’t it?” I said.

“Ever since we started in Dad’s trailer in Tennessee.” She looked around quickly. “C’mere, Kathy! Share a moment!”

Kathy was sitting in the floor playing with a toy airplane. “Teh-wee. Aiwpwane.” She held it up.

Terri giggled. “As soon as you can reach the pedals, Kat.”

Kathy stood, toddled over. She’s getting comfortable with walking. I’m thinking that she’s frustrated because she knows how, but her muscles don’t work as well as she’d like.

Terri pulled her up onto her thigh. They hugged me.

Idyllic.

Mizz Lee’s turn:

Monday is one of the days I schedule for a session with my beloved Munchkins. I have a new student, Derek. On the positive side of his situation, he’s amazingly bright. He needs to be, because in addition to spending his time in public schools, he missed a lot of school due to an automobile accident that killed his mom and ultimately, after a long while, his dad. His dad’s final wish was that Derek’s older sister, Tara, return to Auburn to pursue her engineering degree. She’d only gotten past her freshman orientation when their world came tumbling down.

To Derek’s benefit, he seems to fit in with the original Munchkins, those whom Rachel terms “The First Bunch”. The result of that is that his speech has taken an immediate turn towards more correct grammar and a more expansive vocabulary.

On Mondays we spend most of our hour and a half session conversing about grammar, sentence structure, identifying terms and tenses. At the end of the session, I leave them with an assignment.

Let me expound upon what that means. I spent more than forty years in public school classrooms. Passing out homework assignments was quite the exercise for me. I knew that with some classes, I would be doing well if I received over fifty percent of them back at all and some of those would be hardly worth the efforts I spent poring over them for grading. It wasn’t as bad when I first started teaching, but prior to my retirement, fifty percent was a normal return.

It showed, naturally, in the classrooms as well.

That was in those classrooms. In this group, a hundred percent is the norm. They never missed one except when Rachel came down with the flu, and even then she asked for me to visit her so she could talk about it.

For today’s assignment I chose to have each of them write me a fiction story starring a version of themselves as a main character. “Between three and four thousand words according to Microsoft Word‘s counter,” I instruct. “You have until next Monday.”

“Mizz Lee,” Derek starts, “That’s a lot of words...”

“Yes, Derek, it is, but if you look at it as a fairy tale, it’s just a regular fairy tale.”

“Yes, Derek,” Rachel said. “So, ‘Once upon a time... ‘ And you only have to come up with the rest. It’ll be fun!”

That seals it for Derek. I see how he is around Rachel. He’s friends with all three of the girls, but to Rachel he’s got that puppy dog thing going. If she smiles at him, his tail wags. If Rachel says ‘fun’, then that’s the Gospel According to Rachel and I know that I’ll get the paper from Derek.

“I will expect an email with your link to your story on the server. We will read and discuss...”

Again Derek looked apprehensive. The girls, though, are used to collaboration. He looked at me, a quick click of his eyes, then he regarded his classmates.

“Easy-peasy,” Vicki said. “We get started, we can check each other’s work.”

“This isn’t meant to be a finished story, ready for publication. I do expect you to follow good grammar, style and punctuation. Spelling is always in order.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Terri replied for the group.