Chapter 16

June 9, 2018

Maren and Civia stepped in their front door to be met immediately by Kalina wearing a concerned, motherly look.

“I wish we had a tub. I always found it soothing during periods to soak in the tub. Are you feeling any worse? Expressing any more symptoms?”

Emma sharply said, “Kalina! It’s not cancer, and you’re not making her feel better.”

Kalina closed her eyes, breathed deeply a few times, opened her eyes, then responded, “Thanks, my very favorite wife,” and smiled at Emma when she snorted in response.

Civia took the opportunity to fight against smothering by stating, “Too bad Charlie already snapped up all the Go4 Moms. You might have had a chance for another wife if one or more of them were still available.”

Maren snorted, very much like her mother, at that, and added, “Or you could ask Charlie if he’d be willing to share one or more of his wives with Dad so you could have a second wife. However, you’d probably need a larger bedroom, then.”

At Kalina’s stupefied expression, Emma chuckled, but then looked to her daughter and demanded, “Don’t give her any ideas. Charlie’s got some very attractive wives, and I don’t want to be put out to pasture.”

Kalina suddenly got her mental feet under her, stepped quickly over to Emma, threw her arms around her, and kissed her very enthusiastically for nearly two minutes.

Maren quietly said, “Wow. That’s the longest kiss we’ve seen from any of them with each other.”

“I know,” Civ replied equally softly. “Isn’t that great?!”

Maren nodded enthusiastically.

Still holding Emma in her arms, Kalina stated, “Your ... biological daughter’s already gone through this. This is a first for me, so please understand what I’m feeling. However, you’re also right in that I’m not helping matters.” She breathed deeply, then added, “Emma, I love you. You make what was already a wonderful marriage even better, and only partly because you provide us a ... very different viewpoint, and one that’s made it easier ... to deal with the extensive changes that our girls have engendered and have made our various decisions more palatable to our girls and more in line with their ... reliability and maturity. You’re very sexy, and you’ve made our sex life, which was very good, spectacular.”

Quietly, Maren asked Civia, “We done good. Didn’t we?”

Civ nodded in firm agreement.

Still within Emma’s arms, Kalina asked, “Civ, what do you want to do?”

“Liya suggested that I take it easy today because if this is my first period, she says I have no clue how it will go, how I’ll feel, and that I shouldn’t be doing something like leading our grocery shopping expedition for the first time.”

“Liya’s very right about that ... as, I’ve learned, she is about so very many things. Why don’t you get comfortable in your ... What did you call it? P skimpywear?”

“Yes. Mom are you ... truly okay with us wearing that little here?”

“I’m getting there. When it gets my dander up a little, I just have to remind myself that many of those girls are less covered at the ... multi-family get-togethers and that such apparel is not at all odd for you. It’s not like any of us will get so turned on that we’ll try to do sex things with you. You two must realize that your dad and I did not grow up in ... permissive households. What we’ve encountered in the compound is not what we know and we’re trying to adjust on the fly. If those girls were even a smidge less responsible, less reliable ... Well, maybe not a smidge, but if they were less reliable or responsible, which makes their ... very different lifestyle palatable, we would not be so permissive, even with Emma’s contribution to how we run this house.”

Kalina breathed deeply again, and continued with, “But they are incredibly reliable. They are very responsible. And somehow, with the incredible liberalness regarding sex and relationships, you two have become ... incredibly wonderful daughters. You’re taking on ... You’ve taken on many of the ways they look at the world, some of which are so very different to how we were raised, even your biological mother, Maren. Those girls have inculcated you girls with their ... belief system, but since that system includes respect of others, including their parents and their ... sisters’ and wives’ parents, even before Emma came into our lives, Jeff and I have been altering our ... worldview incredibly rapidly.

“This is a long-winded way to explain that while we’re not perfectly comfortable with you two wearing so little here, we understand that what you’d really want is ... nudity here like you have in the J when Brett’s not there. You’ve developed a healthy, caring interest in sex that you see as related to love, rather than to the pleasures of personal enjoyment over other considerations. If you two were even a few years older, we’d probably be willing to allow you to live at the J however you wanted, and that would include having sex with ... however many of them you wanted. Similar behavior from those girls has certainly not made them less responsible.”

Civia asked, “You ... truly are okay with them having sexual love of each other?”

“Civ, Maren, I don’t know as much about Emma’s childhood as I do Jeff’s and mine, but I know that neither Jeff nor I were anywhere near as responsible and reliable as those girls are. Had I had the freedom to have as much sex as I wanted at 15, my life would be very much different and very much worse. While you’ve not seen the sex over there, you’ve seen their priorities. Haven’t you?” When both girls nodded, Kalina asked, “So do they have sex all the time? Do they conveniently forget about papers for school that need writing, grocery trips that need doing, or soccer games to play solely so they can have more sex?”

Maren replied, “No. I know you know it, but I ... we understand your point. Sex happens there only when they have no tasks undone. That’s usually at night before sleeping, but from what we understand, it occurs at almost any time of day, but not if there are ... tasks hanging over them.”

“Exactly. If my friends and I were living together and were sexual with boys and each other when we were 15, had we been in charge of a passel or however many girls live there now, we might have starved before we burned the house down. And relative to most of my friends at that age, I was the responsible one. Literally, I could not have managed what those girls are managing.

“Look at you two. You’re now the lead for that whole menagerie for grocery shopping, for ensuring that all 18 of you eat, eat well, and have all the necessities you need. I would have blanched at being assigned that task, even for our family of only four when I was 12. I would not have looked at it as taking the weight of the task off someone’s shoulders that were overburdened by responsibilities, as you two did, but as taking me away from my friends and toward more responsibility that I did not want. Your only concern is screwing up and letting down your ... sisters.

“Civia, Maren, you two have become highly responsible, highly reliable, and very wonderful daughters. We can’t ... yet ... give you some of the things you want here, such as nudity, but for whatever you do want, if we can work out how to accept those desires, then we’ll probably accede to your wishes. P skimpywear is, relative to some other things for which you might ask, easy to accept. But, know this, you two. You, now, know, even if you might not fully embrace all of the ramifications of that knowledge, that Emma and I both like girls.”

The two young girls gazed at their Moms still in each other’s arms for at least ten seconds before, first, Civia’s, then Maren’s, eyebrows rose and their eyes rounded.

Civia stated, “You’re ... suggesting ... or, rather, saying, that you might ... be affected by us running around in the house in, essentially, underwear.”

Emma, who had let Kalina go through all of that because she was doing a good job, spoke up, “Exactly. And guess what Jeff likes, exclusively.”

Maren replied, “Girls.”

Civ, a bit glumly, said, “We can be more fully clothed here.”

Emma continued responding, saying, “No, that’s not what we’re saying, or even suggesting. What we’re saying is that if you want to, as you said, run around the house in your underwear, you must accept that, at least at times, one or more of your parents might be appreciating you for more than just the wonderful daughters you are.”

Kalina followed immediately with, “And that has always been the case with Jeff, too.”

Maren asked, “We ... knew that ... some men ... like ... younger girls. I guess that was just something that we knew but hadn’t fully understood. Why would they ... feel like that?”

Softly, Emma said, “Why don’t we be comfortable, as the ... coming discussion might take a while.”

Civia asked, “Did you mean ... our ... clothing?”