Chapter 153: Happy Cake Day!

Monday, June 25, 1984

I woke before Angie and smiled to myself, watching her sleep. If I’d bought a card, I’d have had it ready, but Angie and I had long since decided that cards were usually frivolous. We said everything a card would say and far more, and we said it quite often.

Instead, I waited quietly until her eyes started to flutter before saying, “Happy Birthday, little sis.”

Her eyes made it fully open and she grinned. “Thanks, big bro!”

She leaned up and kissed me, quickly but quite warmly.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too,” I said, smiling widely.

We just snuggled for a bit, then climbed out of bed. When we emerged from my room a few minutes later, Mom looked at us from the kitchen and smiled.

“Happy Birthday, Angie! Morning, Steve!”

“Thanks, Mom!” Angie said.

Mom got up and met Angie in a hug, and then I got one, too.

As usual, Angie let me have the bathroom first, since I tended to be quick. It also gave her and Mom a few minutes to talk.

The whole thing was an amusing reminder of how things had slowly evolved. At first, Angie and me sleeping together was worrisome for Mom. Oh, she understood it, but it made her nervous, and we were careful of her sensibilities. By now, though, she knew we weren’t going to cross any lines, and it was something that just happened. Normal, for our family.

Oh, we were still careful of her sensibilities — Angie had worn appropriate pajamas to bed, and so had I, just like always — but that was as much for us as for Mom.

I had a feeling that Mom knew, to her own satisfaction, that we hadn’t crossed any lines, here or elsewhere. And that, if we had, she would have known it. I have no idea how; I was just certain she would.

Mom had gotten us both to eighteen. We were healthy, happy, and very well prepared for adulthood. Even if we weren’t perfect Lutherans (or even close to that), Mom would’ve stuck up for us as good, moral people with good values and principles. She could let go gently and let us be ourselves.

Looking back on that first day (almost certainly the most confusing day of my lives), my whole world changed twice, once from starting over and once from meeting this Angie. The two were inextricable but not the same. Starting over without this Angie — or any Angie — would’ve resulted in a very different Steve Marshall than I was.

One can never know what life will bring. We’d had almost four years together, three and a half knowing who each other really was. We might have six or more decades to go. Things happen, and people change, but I both truly hoped and believed that our ‘always’ and ‘forever’ were just that.

I’d never had a sibling before, of course. My ex-wife had, and she had gone through periods of being very close to her siblings — and periods of not speaking to them for years at a time, with extremely frosty relations and hard feelings on both sides. Paige had Ted, and they could barely even talk now. Jas had Andrew, who was currently at least a sore subject and might remain so until the wedding.

The thought of that happening between Angie and me was almost physically painful.

Let it never come to pass.

Mom had made some of Angie’s favorites, which were by and large my favorites, too: pancakes, homemade corned beef hash, bacon, and eggs. We split a grapefruit, too, as we often did.

Breakfast was relaxed. We had nowhere to be and nothing to do in particular until this afternoon. Staying at home and hanging out with Mom seemed like the thing to do. It would be the last day that happened for at least two months and potentially much longer, after all. Why pass up the chance to spend time with her just to go hang out with people we would be seeing nearly every day for the next four years, at least?

It’s not as if we wouldn’t see them anyway. Dinner tonight would be at Angie’s Houston birthday favorite (and mine, too) — Brennerman’s — and the guest list would of course include Paige, Tony, and Jean plus Jasmine, Camille, and Francis. We’d kept it to ‘family,’ or the list would’ve grown markedly.

Ted was (mercifully) out of town taking summer classes. We’d avoided him thus far this summer and would hopefully continue to do so.

Ang and I went to the store with Mom, mostly to hang out but also to shop. There was a fiction between us that Mom was sharing her tips on how to shop. In fact, she’d shared them long ago, and I’d shared ones I should never have known (while — I hoped! — making it seem plausible I knew them).

The part that was true, of course, was that we were going to be providing for ourselves starting next fall. Oh, we’d have Jas and Paige, plus Cammie and Mel, and we would undoubtedly share cooking and shopping. Plus, we would have some number of meals on campus as part of a meal plan. But home cooking was going to be the bulk of our diet, and we should be good at it.

The best part of it for me (and, to a lesser extent, for Angie) was that Mom had changed. If tradition held, she would change more, but Mom today made choices that first-life Mom hadn’t, not in 1984. Spices were more varied, vegetables were more varied and more often fresh or frozen than canned, and so forth. She made dishes that she’d never made, as far as I knew, even later in my first life (chili, for instance — mild, but not bland) had become one of her regular meals.

Mom walked us through picking out various vegetables, meats, and all sorts of other things. She knew we didn’t really need it, but she also really did know some things we’d missed or forgotten.

If nothing else, it was a great bonding experience. That was, after all, the whole point of doing this.

We spent a fair bit of the afternoon packing boxes. Not a bonding activity, to be sure, but it was going to happen anyway, and we both felt it would continue to break up the empty-nest feeling. If the nest partly emptied now — right before we spent a week mostly together on vacation — it might not feel like it was emptying later, or at least not in the same way.

Perhaps just ‘ripping the Band-Aid off’ was the easier option, but I doubted it. This felt like the best approach.

It was, undoubtedly, the most practical approach. Who knew how much time we would have in August for packing? As much as we needed, certainly, but doing this right mattered. This was a much bigger move than any of my first-life college moves. We weren’t likely coming back for summers, nor after college. This was it; after this, we would live in the College Station house for at least four years, and then somewhere else.

The odds that we would ever live in this house again, at least in this life, were very small. Visit here? Absolutely. Sleep here? Of course. I might even wind up living here for a week or two one day, decades from now, if Mom and Dad kept it until they passed away. I’d need to live here to clean things out, just as I’d done before.

We certainly would leave quite a few things here for now, but less than I had in my first life. There were things we didn’t need in the College Station house, and we didn’t have unlimited storage there. Mom and Dad would be fine with our leaving things.

Over time, they might want everything consolidated into either my room or Angie’s, with the other room becoming Mom’s junk room, but who knew? My only experience with that was a Mom and Dad who never had a daughter, and Angie’s experience was with a Mom and Dad whose daughter was never going to just drop by, and a son who never truly grew up in many ways.

Once Dad got home, he immediately found Angie and wished her a happy birthday. He gave her a card, too, because that’s what we did as a family. Angie and I were changing that, but slowly.

We stopped packing and hung out with him and Mom, just chatting. Normally, he would’ve been at his desk, writing up notes from work and doing some other daily chores, but he’d put them off today, unsurprisingly.

He wanted to change for dinner, and we decided to as well. That left us ready to go at five, which worked out great for the five-thirty reservation. Early for many people, but right for Dad’s schedule.

When we arrived, the Seilers had just gotten there, and Jasmine and her parents arrived before we’d made it to the front door. The ten of us were promptly seated near the big window, with Angie facing the window. Mom and Dad wound up across from us, so that Paige could sit next to Angie and Jas could sit next to me. Jean sat next to Mom, with Tony on the end, and Camille sat next to Dad, with Francis on the end.

The Seilers and Nguyens both had cards for Angie. We’d already told them they didn’t need to give her any gifts. I imagined Paige might well give her a present of some sort — jewelry seemed possible — but perhaps not here. Oh, nothing fancy, but special. Ang and I could afford ‘fancy,’ but were seldom going to spend big money on something. Jas could, too, though her money was more limited after the Subaru. Paige couldn’t really afford it at all — at least not yet. Not only that, but the idea of spending a bunch of money to show someone you loved them seemed silly compared to simply showing them you loved them day in and day out.