Chapter 9

Donna’s turn:

I don’t remember how I did it with Cindy. I mean, I was twenty and my lifestyle wasn’t exactly conducive to remembering things, but now I’ve got Elise and Little Bill or Billy Jeff. We gave up on ‘Little Willie’. Too many snickers, and it’s unbecoming of me as mother to have to beat the snot out of a snickering kid or parent.

Leesie says ‘yeff’. I definitely think her brain holds a vocabulary that outruns her mouth’s ability to pronounce it.

So here’s ‘Jeff’. As Terri says, ‘a major resource sink’. Elise helps, but hey, she’s three, and all too often, ‘helping’ brings on more work. She tries though, and that’s charming to me. If Bill’s around, he’s a big help too, but he works, and when he gets home, I don’t begrudge him a little recliner time because that’s often one kid or the other or sometimes both, piled on top of him.

I have pictures.

Which brings me to the REAL help. Mandy. My stepdaughter. She just pitches in. If I’m handling baby chores, she’s doing housework, taking care of things. Between the two of us and half a Bill, we stay tip-top. Well, there’s outside help, too. We have a housekeeper come in two days a week to do a thorough job on floors and bathrooms and whatever, but we don’t let things go downhill between her visits.

Mandy. My really surprise kid. Little Cindy almost, when it comes to looks. Red hair and blue eyes to Cindy’s green. Brain. Senses. Just a great kid in a community full of great kids. Could’ve been so much worse. Had more than one mom cry on my shoulder over her kids when I was in Vegas. I know what bad ones can do. I should be a stinkin’ expert, having done it to my mom.

But Mandy. She’s expanded to fit the arena she’s in – popped right past high school, and for the second time I have a teenaged daughter in college. This time I’m paying closer attention.

Mandy’s grandma has that connected apartment and we welcome her every evening. Well, some evenings she goes off to play bridge or socialize. Mizz Lee pulled her into the bridge club, which does more than just play bridge.

“Grandma’s had more of a social life since she moved here than I ever saw before,” Mandy says.

“It’s good for her,” I replied. “She gets to be with people who were in the same world she was.”

Mandy’s face changed. “Do you ever regret that about being married to Dad?”

“Oh, darlin’,” I said, grabbing her for a hug. “First, what I got out of MY world was trash until I got here. And now that I’m here, these people don’t have a world like anything I ever saw...”

“Me neither.”

“ ... And I got Bill, and me ‘n’ him, we make this marvelous universe together. You’re part of it. Regret? I’d have to be nuts.”

“I wonder sometimes about that ‘older – younger’ thing. I mean, so many of ‘em here.”

“See anybody unhappy?”

“No. Not a one. Cindy ... when Dan’s out of town. She practically mopes...”

“She’s got it bad...” I smiled.

“And they’ve been married YEARS!” she stated. “It’s REAL!”

“It is, baby.”

So it’s family night. I’m on the sofa, Bill’s got Jeff. Elise is ‘coloring’, which means there’s a crayon involved, and paper ... and what’s that ad say? “No rules. Just right.” I think that her motor skills limit what she can do with a crayon and it frustrates her.

And Mandy’s here.

“I had a long talk with Grandma today,” she said.

“Something wrong?” Bill questioned.

“No, just something I need to fix. I need to talk about it with my family.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” I said.

“It affects all of us,” I said, “but I think it affects you most, Mom.”

She calls me ‘mom’ and every time it happens I melt a little.

“What is it, then?”

She sighed, took a breath like she was steeling herself for something big. “Elise is a Carmody kid. Jeffy’s a Carmody kid. I’m a Carmody kid, but my birth name’s Simmons. I wanna change it.”

“You talked with your grandmother?” Bill asked.

“I did. She’s okay with it. Said it should’ve been that way since I was conceived, but if that had happened, I wouldn’t have THIS. I love my family. Mom?”

‘Mom’ didn’t talk. ‘Mom’ was too busy crying. Which gets me a hugging Mandy.

“Let’s go hug on Mommy,” Bill tells Jeffy. Now I have them and you just know that Elise won’t be left out.

“Is this a ‘yes’?” Mandy asks from inside the scrum.

“It’s a yes,” I said. “How could you think I’d object, darlin’?”

“Cindy needs to know,” Mandy said.

“Well, when you tell ‘er, ask if she’ll run it through Judge Charlie or somebody. I have no idea how to do such a thing.”

Mandy giggled. “Judge Charlie seems to be the one to talk with about family law.”

“You sure you want to do this?” Bill asked.

“I do, Dad. You ARE my dad. If Mom’d had any sense, she’d’ve put your name on my birth certificate, but she didn’t. We KNOW I’m your daughter. I just think I should have your name. Like my Mom now. And my sister and my brother.”

“You know when you tell Cindy, she’s gonna go nuts...”

“I’m used to having a nut for a sister,” she retorted. “We can handle it.”

Cindy’s turn:

Ten days until new Pilatus day. I guess I could be a bit more excited, but hey, I’m soooo blasé. This is my THIRD.

I called Mister Bjorn. “You’ve gotten me addicted, sir.”

“Cindy, when I think of all my friends, I think you can do it best. Do you have your plane tickets?”

“Yessir.”

“You are coming over with your husband and Johanna and Stoney?”

“Yessir. Just like last time. We will visit Uncle Jan and we will visit you and then I will fly my new airplane home.”

“I look forward to seeing you again, Cindy.”

“Thanks, Bjorn. Are you able to go with us to the factory?”

“I am scheduled heavily during that period. I think you can do this solo.”

“I am saddened, Bjorn. They will not treat me as well without you as our real European.”

“Two items, Cindy. First, I am Norse, and much of Europe tired of seeing us a thousand years ago. Second, you are paying these people five million US dollars. They will treat you well.”

“I hope so. The air traffic control system in Europe is very different than ours.”

“Ah, but you are Cindy. Johanna states that you are magic.”

“Johanna is the real magic, Bjorn.”

After we finished talking, I resolved myself to subject Dan and me to some study of European flight rules. I’m pretty fluent in the North American system. Europe really is different. It’s not an insurmountable issue. Still might trouble Bjorn for a pilot to get us from Switzerland to Scotland, though.

Naturally all this is discussed with my partners in crime, my Dan and Johanna and Stoney, while little Stoney’s playing on the floor of their apartment.

“You give him crayons?” I asked, watching him with a blue crayon and a pad of paper.

“He knows that there’s a difference between something that LOOKS good and how it tastes. Crayons are not edible. He knows.”

“No coloring books?”

“He does those sometimes. But I think he sees us writing on the whiteboard and he knows that it’s not random squiggles, so he’s exploring communications by writing.”

“You’re making this up,” Dan said.

Stoney laughed. “Dan Richards, YOU, of all people, should know that thinking of standard limitations based on age don’t work around here.”

“Son,” he said to the toddler with the fat crayon. “Write down who’s here.”

“‘Kay, daddy,” the sprout replied. He tore off the page he was working on, not too artlessly, and on a blank page, started scrawling.

I gasped. “Are you working with him on the alphabet?”

“Not yet, but what do you think?”

“That’s a definite ‘C’. And a ‘D’.”

“If this got to you, what about your baby sister?”

I remembered that last visit to the little paradise that has become my mom’s life. My half-sister Elise. On the floor. Paper and crayons.

“Noooo.”

“They compare notes,” Johanna said.

“Tell Mimi to add alphabet to her sessions,” I posited. “Just to catalyze.”

“I dunno,” Stoney said. “They’re coming up with this on their own.”

The redheaded sprout stood and brought the paper his dad. “Daddy. Woster.”

Dan gulped. “He just said ‘roster’?”

The toddler looked at Dan. “Woster, Missa Dan.”

“Show me what you wrote, Stoney...”

He brought the paper over. A pudgy finger pointed. “Mommy. Daddy. Cinny. Missa Dan.”

“Gimme a hug, kiddo...” Dan spread his arms, got a load of redheaded kiddo.

Sometimes seeing that gets my lady parts shifting into ‘mommy mode’. Still ... Am I being selfish? I love my life with Dan. Drop of the hat, we’re off, just like this trip to Europe. A baby would put the clamps on my mission-ready status as a pilot. I can just see trying to nurse on an IFR approach into Bismarck, North Dakota.

Johanna still flies. She’s one of the PC-12 pilots on our ‘woster’. She makes flights, too, but always with a rated co-pilot, so she can tend to little Stoney while in flight. Tina’s not rated in the PC-12, but she’s done trips in one of the single-engined Cessnas. It’s NOT convenient because unlike the Pilatus, you can’t get out of the cockpit and walk back into the cabin to perform child-care functions.

Still, they – her, Alan, and little Kathy - have made trips home to Louisiana. That’s where loss of Terri becomes an impediment. The pTerridactyl, among her myriad other functions, was a great back-seat babysitter. That is, when Tina didn’t take the back seat and give Terri some pilot time up front with her dad.